As 2004 lurched to its conclusion I found
myself in the mens room at the gym, grateful I didnt
suffer from some kind of obsessive / compulsive disorder. You
know, one of those poor people (like Monk on TV) who have to
check the pilot light on the stove 60 times a day and start
hyperventilating if all the pens on the desk arent lined up
just so. Because I noticed that the urinal cake was a little
off-center and I know stuff like that really bothers people with
OCD, and really, what could they do about an off-center urinal
cake? I mean, what would MONK do? What, when you come right down
to it, can anybody do about such a dilemma? Nobody wants to mess
with urinal cakes but people with OCD, I mean, some of them wash
25 times a day and thats if they dont mess with
ANYTHING. BOY was I grateful that I dont have some sort of
obsessive compulsive disorder. Anyway, I spent the next 20 hours
wondering if the urinal cake were still off-center or if maybe
the janitor had noticed and fixed it. Around the 20th
hour I was back at the gymI dont generally go two
days in a row, but I wanted to work on my triceps or my delts or
somethingand it turned out that the cake was still
off-center. Boy, I said to myself, somebody with OCD would be
puh-ritty upset about that. Puh-RITTY doggone upset. I wondered
if I should let tell somebody at the front desk. "You
know," I might say, "that could really make somebody
with OCD... you know... OBSESS." I actually started for the
front desk but when I was almost there, I went back to the
mens room, just to check one more time that it was still
off-center. I mean, Id look like a real idiot if I reported
an off-center urinal cake and then it turned out that somebody
had fixed it while I was reporting it, right? But it was still
off-center. So I headed back to the front desk, but as soon as
the bathroom door was out of my sight I was faced with the same
dilemma. Then I had this brilliant idea. I realized if I wedged a
piece of cardboard under the door, nobody could open the door
without removing the cardboard, and that would give me enough
time to report the urinal cake problem without having to worry
about someone fixing it.

Well, its not like theres a
stockpile of cardboard wedges at the gym. So I went home and
sliced up a couple of shoeboxes and made three wedges of varying
thickness. By the time Id cleaned up the cardboard Id
trimmed off the wedges (one of them didnt come out exactly
even on both sides and I must have taken half an hour getting it
right) the gym was closed for the day. Which meant yet another
day had evaporated without the urinal cake problem being
addressed. No big deal for me, of course, but imagine how
somebody with this obsessive / compulsive thing going on would
react. They wouldnt be able to stop thinking about it. I
could only hope no one so afflicted had noticed it.

That night I had a dream about it. Now,
heres the thing that alarmed me when I woke up: if someone
like ME, with no OCD, ends up having a disturbing dream about
something like this, what must it be like for someone with OCD?
So I gathered up my wedges and went straight to the gym.

Do I need to tell you that the cake was still
off-center? But of course now I was prepared. I wedged the door
shut and all but trotted to the front desk, and I said, excuse
me, but theres a problem here. Now you may not think this
is a big dealand for that matter I may not think its
a big dealbut for someone with obsessive compulsive
disorder its a big deal indeed. Im talking about the
off-center urinal cake in the mens room. Last night

Im sorry, said the man at the front desk.
The what in the mens room?

Theres an off-center urinal cake in the
second urinal from the right. Its supposed to be sitting
right in the middle just a hair above the drain, but its
off to the side by a good three inches.

Im sorry, but... you mean those little
deodorizing disks?

YES! I said. Its off by three inches.
Now, to someone with OCD, this is just maddening. And bear this
in mindlast night I had a dream about this. Me, a normal
guy who couldnt care less about whether the urinal cake is
correctly situated or not. I dreamed I was playing a video game
where the object was to move the off-center cake back to where it
belongs, but the cursor kept sliding off the cake. This went on
for hours, it seemed. And then when I finally got the cake right
in the center, you know what happened?

I dont.

The cake slid right out again. I could have
screamed. In fact I did, and then I woke up. And I went back to
sleep and I had exactly the same dream. And were talking
about me. And Im pretty much the mental health poster
child. Just imagine would somebody with OCD would have
experienced. You know, the gym may even have legal obligations
here. When you some right down to it, whats the difference
between an off-center sanitary cake and an ice covered stairway?

Well, you got me there. You know, until we get
this thing straightened out, maybe you should used a different
urinal?

This isnt about me, I said.

No, no, of course not. Well, let me take
care...

But at that moment a gentlemen with a towel
over his shoulders came in and said, Bob, the mens room
door is locked or something. I cant get it open. Bob sighed
and said he might was well take care of all the mens room
problems at once.

It turned out the fellow with the towel had
yanked the door so hard he had wedged my wedge completely under
the door and the three of us couldn't budge it at all. So Bob
allowed the man with the towel to use the employees bathroom and
said well, I guess that solves this cake problem for the time
being since were not going to get that door open till the
clean up crew comes and since were closing up this
afternoon until January 2nd nobody with OCD is going
to see it in the meantime and Ill leave the guys a note
about, uh, making sure all the cakes are, uh, in place.

I nodded but I felt sick. Finally I said, That
means that the cake is going to remain off-center until the 2nd
of January! And what if somebody with OCD has ALREADY SEEN IT?
Hell go crazy! I sure hope nobody with OCD has seen it!

Lets hope, said Bob.

An Underdog
Christmas

When I was 9, I got an Underdog alarm clock for
Christmas and all that winter I set about scientifically proving
that the alarm worked for every single quarter hour between 3:30
and 9:30. If I set it real early-- 3:45, say-- I'd just make the
proper notation in my Underdog notebook and go back to bed. (I
received eight Underdog related items that Christmas, all of
which had been purchased together as the Official Underdog Junior
Executive Overnight Kit. It came in a very spiffy Underdog
Carrying Case. My parents unpacked it and then wrapped each item
separately, including the case, so I got to thank them eight
times. In fact, allow me take this opportunity to thank them
again. Thanks, Mom & Dad!). But if I set it for a semi-normal
waking time, I'd pad downstairs and turn on the TV and try to
catch the test pattern switchovers. We received seven channels,
and none of them broadcast round the clock; at the end of the
day, which might occur at 2 AM, the station would play the Star
Spangled Banner against stock footage of air force jets zooming
around and then sign off, at which point a test pattern would
appear, accompanied by a 'boooooop!' on the audio track. When the
new broadcast day began a few hours later, the test pattern would
be replaced by a reprise of the zooming jets and the national
anthem, followed by the first show of the day. This would be
something very bizarre and/or boring-- a farm report, a Christian
Puppet Theater Lesson, or Yoga for Health, a strange exercise
show hosted by a guy who got into The Lotus Position at the start
of the quarter hour (it was a 15 minute show) and then never
moved. It was always fun to watch these shows, but the real
thrill was racing down the dial as one station after another
switched off its test pattern and began the broadcast day. Four
of the stations kicked off at 5 AM, but in these pre-computer
days they were often off by several seconds (channel 11 was
capable of missing by as much as three minutes) and nothing
filled me with such a sense of accomplishment as catching ALL
FOUR STATIONS at the exact instant of switchover.

One morning I trotted downstairs at 4:45,
determined to hit all four at the instant of switchover, and I
turned on the set, and the channel 9 test pattern was out of
focus and rimed with video static. Channel 11 was a little
better, channel 13 didn't come in at all, channels 2, 4, 5, and 7
were completely scrambled, and there was some GUY talking to the
camera on channel 9 but the sound was just white noise. I went
upstairs and woke my parents.

"It's the big one," I said.
"Duh-Bow-You Duh-Bow-You Three. Russkis took out New York.
ABC, NBC, CBS, all gone. Ka-blooey."

"They get the one that shows Soupy
Sales?" asked my father.

"Lot of static but it's still there.
Studio must be deep underground."

"Wake me up if they get that one."

I went outside. We'd been hit with an ice storm
during the night, and our TV antenna was dangling over the edge
of the roof. This probably accounted for our lousy TV reception,
I reflected, but I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps
the antenna had been dislodged by the shock wave when Manhattan
was leveled. I took a picture of it (the antenna, not the
Manhattan Crater) with my plastic Underdog Camera. The snow from
my mitten got on the Underdog decal and by the time I was back in
the house, it had peeled off a little and I could see there was a
Shelley Fabares decal underneath it; This was my first inkling
that the world was not all it was cracked up to be.

Later that morning my dad went up on the roof
to fix the antenna while I soaked the decals off my Underdog
stuff. My Underdog notebook was actually an Underdog notebook,
everything else had begun life promoting Shelley Fabares,
Crusader Rabbit, or Charley Weaver. I couldn't tell about the
alarm clock because the decal was under the glass. I was able to
salvage the camera because Shelley's decal came off as easily as
Underdog's, but the carrying case had to be dumped because the
Shelley logo was embossed. Crusader Rabbit was not a problem, I
was a fan, though of course I preferred his sidekick, Rags the
Tiger. I couldn't figure out what to do about the Charley Weaver
stuff; I still can't.

Adjusting a roof top TV antenna is now a lost
art, like using a slide rule or threading a 16mm projector. The
tines had to be oriented (or, as the kids say, orientated) in
such a way that as many channels as possible came in clearly, and
to do this, you needed someone watching the TV and hollering
"THAT'S GOOD! NO, YOU HAD IT BUT YOU LOST IT. THAT'S WORSE.
BACK! PUT IT THE WAY YOU HAD IT WHEN THE PICTURE WAS GOOD. NO.
IT'S GETTING EVEN WORSE." Often a perfect picture could be
obtained only when someone was actually in contact with the
antenna, or when Mr. Donaldson, the gym teacher who lived up the
block, was walking his dog; he had a metal plate in his head and
reception perked up noticeably whenever he was in the vicinity.
My father was an excellent antenna jockey, lost his footing only
two or three times that morning on the ice coated slope of the
roof, and was back inside for some hot chocolate shortly before
lunch. "How many channels we got?" he asked.

"Everything's okay except channel 7 and
channel 13."

"How bad is channel 7?"

"Fuzzy but you can sort of see what it
is."

"And 13?"

"Nothing."

"Good enough," he said, nodding.
"Hey, where did this mug come from?"

"Never saw it before," I said.

"Your mother must have picked it up at the
Acme. Charley Weaver?? Why on earth would somebody make a Charley
weaver mug?"

"Dunno," I said.

"Well, I bet it was cheap."

"Bet it was," I said. I hunkered down
in front of the TV to see if anybody was going to mention the
devastating nuclear war we'd just come through but nobody did.
How could they expect to keep something like that a secret? I
peeled the decal off my Shelley Fabares pen, not sure I really
wanted to know what was underneath.

Calvanos
Chemistry Set

One Saturday morning there were, inexplicably,
no Japanese monster movies on TV so Picarillo, Calvano and I did
the Neolithic equivalent of channel surfingPicarillo went
over to the TV and served as our voice-activated clicker,
flipping through the channels by hand. Since the dial only went
up to 13 (there was a separate dial for UHF channels, but since
as far as anybody knew UHF channels did not actually exist, no
one ever bothered with it) it didnt take long to check out
our options. "Wait a second, Picarillo, go back. Its
that guy from last weeks STAR TREK!"

Last weeks Star Trek episode had been
"Charlie X," starring Robert Walker Jr. as a human
raised by aliens, who consequently has developed incredible super
powers, which he employs appallingly during a sort of cosmic
temper tantrum. This, of course, is precisely how the three of us
would have employed our incredible super powers, had we any, so
we talked about the episode incessantly.

We had never seen Robert Walker Jr. before, and
suddenly here he was in some movieand in old one, by the
look of it. It happened to be "Strangers on a Train"
and the Robert Walker we were watching was in fact the father of
the one who had recently run amuck on the Starship Enterprise,
but they were dead ringers. We were fortunate to catch it from
the pivotal early scene in which Walker and total stranger Farley
Granger share a train compartment and in the course of chatting
Walker proposes that, since they have no connection to each
other, they could each murder someone the OTHER person wants
murdered, and they would never be suspected. Despite the absence
of radioactive dinosaurs and Japanese people whose mouths
sometimes did not move while they were talking, we were
mesmerized.

"You know," Calvano said later, after
Robert Walker the Elder had come to a bad but well-deserved end
under a merry-go-round, "WE should do that."

"Kill somebody a stranger wants
dead?" I said, I regret to say without the slightest trace
of disapproval in my voice.

"Nah nah nah. Look, its just a
couple weeks till Christmas. Theres probably some stuff you
want for Christmas your parents arent gonna get you, right?
Stuff you WANT, right? But its..." Here Calvano
affected an elevated tone of voice to indicate he was imitating a
grown-up, although the only grown-up who sounded remotely like
that was Margaret Rutherford"...too DANGEROUS,
Robert, we can NOT buy THAT. Or its too ADULT or too
SHODDY or too DISGUSTING or too..."

"Poisonous," said Picarillo. We
stared at him. "Well, thats what my mom said about the
non-flexible collodion I wanted so I could paint REAL-LOOKING
fake scars on my face."

"Thats EXACTLY what Im talking
about," said Calvano. "The FACT is, its only
REALLY poisonous if you forget to wash it off after a couple
hours. If its only on for a hour or so, you just get
hives."

"I got a kind of crust that one
time," said Picarillo.

"Well, it happens. But the point is they
all have their little QUALMS about this or that. But heres
what Im getting at, from the movie. MY parents qualms
are probably way different from YOUR parents qualms. My
parents might say, "Non-flexible collodion? How many
gallons, Robert?"

"They would??" said Picarillo.

"Well, nothey remember about that
time you got all those blisters on your face. But theres
other stuff."

"It was a CRUST," said Picarillo.

"Yeah, yeah. But say my parents wont
get me a... a... well, lets say some sneakers with a
picture of a MONSTER on it."

"Whoa!! I WANT those!"

"They dont exist, Picarillo,
Im just using it for an example. And lets say your
parents wont get you a skateboard."

"They WONT," said Picarillo.
"I could get hit by a TRUCK."

"But. Listen, okay? YOUR parents might get
you the monster sneakers, and MY parents might get me a
skateboard."

"My parents probably WOULD get me the
monster sneakers."

"But lets say they wouldnt. So
I get a skateboard you dont want, and you get monster
sneakers YOU dont want, and AFTER CHRISTMAS WE TRADE."

Picarillo opened his mouth but I said,
"Picarillo, dont say you WANT the monster sneakers.
Its just an example." Picarillo sulked.

So the three of us sprawled on the
indoor-outdoor carpet in Calvanos basement, bathed in the
blue light of the TV, and tried to think of things our parents
wouldnt get us for Christmas. There were a lot of
possibilities but most of the items MY parents wouldnt buy
were also items Mrs. Calvano and Mrs. Picarillo would draw the
line at as well. Flame thrower? Live iguana? Real shrunken head?

"My parents wont get me a Chemistry
set," Calvano finally announced. "I really stunk up the
house with the last one, a couple years ago."

"I guess... a VENUS FLY TRAP," I
said. "I had one in 5th grade, but my parents
made me get rid of it."

"How come?"

"I had it on the back of the toilet
because the bathroom gets a lot of sun. But my sister would make
my mom take the Venus fly trap out every time she had to use the
bathroom. And once I stuck it on her nightstand and when she woke
up she started screaming. And I said I didnt put it there,
it must have WALKED in and she screamed some more." My
sister, by the way, was 6 years older than I, and therefore in
the 11th grade when this occurred.

"Okay, that should be no sweat. What about
you, Picarillo?"

"I want... um... a pocket knife with a
CURLY thing."

"A what??"

"He means a cork screw," I said.
"Why? Whats the deal about a cork screw?"

"Its curly," Picarillo
explained. "I got a pocket knife with a blade-type blade and
a screw driver, but no curly thing."

"Why wont your parents get you
one?"

"Well, they probably would,"
Picarillo conceded.

"But you..." began Calvano, but I cut
him off.

"Let it go. Ill ask for the
pocketknife, Calvano. Picarillo asks for the chemistry set. You
ask for the Venus Fly Trap."

"Its a knife with a CURLY
thing," Picarillo reminded me.

"Yeah, yeah."

In the end, the curly thing was my downfall. My
parents asked why I was so adamant about a corkscrew? Just what
was I planning to uncork? What REALLY went on when we said we
were just "hanging around?" I had no real answer, since
if Id said "Its CURLY" I would have sounded
as insane as Picarillo. "I just WANT one, thats
all," I said. My parents looked at me the way that Farley
Granger had looked at Robert Walker when he first suggested
trading murders. But Farley Granger eventually came around, while
my parents, it turned out on Christmas morning, did not. It would
have been utterly humiliating, but Calvanos parents had not
come through with the Venus flytrap, either; theyd come up
with a cactus, figuring it was lower maintenance and thus more
likely not to be dead by New Years.

Picarillo got the chemistry set, though. Since
no knife with a curly thing was forthcoming, he set it up in his
bedroom and dutifully went through the experiments in the
enclosed booklet one by one. Calvano, who had limited his own
chemical experiments to free-style lets see what
makes the biggest stink combinations, turned his nose up at
Picarillos book chemistry, but Picarillo
didnt notice. Every now and then he would offer to let
Calvano hold a test tube steady while Picarillo added some
carefully measured powder, but Calvano always declined. He had
his pride.

ASK THE FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY

DEAR FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY:

Ive heard through the grapevine that my
Aunt Dorothy is planning to bake a fruit cake for my Christmas
present. I have an etiquette question: Just how long should one
keep a fruit cake in the fridge before throwing it out? I
certainly dont want to offend Aunt Dorothy, but on the
other hand I dont want this thing in my refrigerator for
the next six months, either.

(signed)

Only interested in doing the right thing

DEAR ONLY:

Discretion is the key here. If Dorothy lives in
the neighborhood, youll want to keep the fruit cake on hand
for at least a couple of weeks in case she drops by, and it
wouldnt hurt to chop off a slice or two to make it look
like youve sampled her masterpiece. This probably
wont fool herno doubt folks have been not eating her
fruit cakes for decadesbut shell appreciate the
effort. If Dorothy is an out-of-towner, you can dump her
abomination as soon as she hits the town limits. You dont
want to do as my mother did 40 years ago, when her cousin
presented her with an immense fruit cake on Christmas Eve.
"Why Dinah," she said, "What a lot of time and
effort! Im truly touched. You shouldnt have!"
and slid the cake into the kitchen garbage. Although my mother
certainly meant no disrespect, she later conceded that this was
something of a faux pas.

*

DEAR FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY:

While we all know that fruit cake is inedible,
isnt it also extremely flammable and therefore dangerous to
have around the house?

(signed)

Always looking for another reason not to have a
fruit cake in the house

DEAR ALWAYS:

Excellent point. All that fruit has been soaked
in some sort of alcohol. One spark and the whole thing could go
up in a jet of flame like Daffy Duck in that Warner Brothers
cartoon ("...I could only do it once..."). And
thats assuming that the recipe has been followed precisely
and a relatively expensive alcohol, such as brandy, is employed.
But lets get real heresince everyone knows that no
human being is going to sample a fruit cake, we can assume that
many cooks save a little money by substituting rubbing alcohol or
even the one of the cheaper grades of gasoline. Lets ask
ourselves: Is that reeking glob of inedible slop on the kitchen
counter worth losing our HOME and perhaps our LIVES?

*

DEAR FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY:

You are always ranting about how many calories
a fruit cake has, but you are also always ranting about like how
nobody eats one. So if nobody eats it who cares how many calories
it has?

(signed)

Discerns a flaw in your arguments, perhaps

DEAR DISCERNS:

When Im wrong, Im wrong, and never
let it be said that I hesitate to admit it. You are correct,
Discerns, and I will stop ranting about how many
calories the average fruit cake contains. After all, a new Buick
contains even more calories, and yet it will not add a single
ounce to your frame, since you arent going to eat it.
Although if you did, it would taste better than a fruit cake. (Of
course Im only guessingnobody knows what a fruit cake
tastes like, except for contestants on Fear Factor).

*

DEAR FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY:

Couldnt we just BAN fruit cakes?
Wouldnt that solve all the fruit cake-related problems?

(signed)

Ready to take drastic measures

DEAR READY:

It sounds good, but remember: If we outlaw
fruitcakes, only fruitcakes will...uh... I mean, only outlaws
will... no, that doesnt work either. But neither does
fruitcake prohibition. Believe me, its been tried. Just as
there are dry towns and counties around the country
(meaning alcohol is prohibited), there were once
fruitless or uncaked areas. It was a good
idea that didnt work. Nor, incidentally, did fruitcake
bootlegging, as there were no customersjust rival gangs
fighting over territory. And once they found out that nobody
wanted their black market fruit cake... well, lets just say
it wasnt pretty.

*

DEAR FRUIT CAKE EXPERT GUY:

I dont understand. Fruit is good. Cake is
good. Why is fruit cake bad? It makes no sense.

(signed)

Confused and disoriented

DEAR CONFUSED:

The idea that "X is good, and Y is good,
so X and Y together must be really good!" is widespread, but
its a fallacy. MEAT is good, cake is good, but would you
want to eat a meat cake? And I have serious doubts as to whether
fruit cake is a cake in any meaningful sense anyway.
"Cake" is a word with many meaningsit can be a
noun ("That is some cake!") or, when combined with
blood and used to describe the hands of flesh-eating
zombies, a modifier ("The flesh-eating zombie ran his
blood-caked hands under the tap following a hearty
repast."). Even when cake IS a noun, its
not necessarily a dessert. After all, we speak of a cake of
soap and even a urinal cake, but it
wouldnt occur to us to eat them (and if it would occur to
YOU, please keep it to yourself. Or write to the Things You
Dont Want to Know About the Mens Room Expert
Guy). I cant help but wonder if the fruit cake was never
intended to be food at all, but was created to serve some other
purpose, and then the creator got hit by a bus or something
before he could tell us what it was.

Tryptophan Coma

I guess it was in 1986, when Halleys
Comet returned, that I realized I didnt know everything. Or
rather I realized that a lot of what I knew was wrong. Id
spent mumble mumble years reading and hearing about
"Haileys Comet." That was the way it was
pronounced until 1986, when it was due for a return trip and
suddenly there were all these newspaper articles and magazine
features and TV specials about it. And everybody in the TV
specials was saying "HALLEYS Comet," as though it
belonged to Halle Berry, which made no sense since she was about
13 then and no one had ever heard of her. I would have sworn that
until that news cycle it had even been spelled
"Haileys Comet," but no. It turned out to be
"Halley" in the pages of the elderly encyclopedia at my
parents house and in the 1964 Information Please Almanac
and at that point I was forced to admit that Id been
misreading and (apparently) mishearing it for decades. I was
gratified to find that other people had also been seeing
"Hailey" for "Halley," notably my father, who
turned purple whenever anyone used what he considered "this
fruity new pronunciation." "Oooh, HALLEY! Woo
woo!" he would sneer at Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov when they
were being interviewed on some National Geographic astronomy
special, sometimes going to far as to lift his pinky delicately
from his beer mug, to subtly indicate what he thought about the
masculinity of anybody who employed the sissified
"Halley" in place of the down-to-earth,
meat-and-potatoes "Hailey."

Anyway, within a year of that celestial event,
I discovered that the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
"Hiroshima" and "A Bell for Adano" was John
Hersey, not John Hershey. In this case I assume thirty odd years
of chocolate bar consumption had thrown me off, but it was still
a bit disconcerting to find that Id been inserting that
phantom "H" into his name while reading a dozen or so
books over the course of 20 years, and to realize that I would
have gone to my grave mispronouncing it had I not stumbled across
Mr. Hersey being interviewed on NET. As it happened, my father
(who had also been calling him "Hershey" forever) was
watching as well, and this time he could not accuse Hersey
himself of mispronouncing his own namewell, he could have,
but he didntbut he still turned purple and projected
a sense of having been somehow deliberately mislead and betrayed.

He hadand I share thisa real
problem with what the kids call "new paradigms." That
is, you know whats what, and then suddenly somebody pops up
to tell you that what is NOT what, and in fact it never was. But
if what ISNT what, then what the hell IS?

Case in point: my father did not believe in
wind chill factor. The weatherman would say, "Its 25
out there, but with the windchill factor, it feels like 5
below." And my father would respond, "When I was a
telephone lineman, I was up on the pole in weather colder than
this with harder winds, and if it had been 5 below, my nose
woulda been frost-bitten." The interesting thing about this
observation is that my dads nose had indeed clearly
sustained some serious cold weather damage at some point. I
brought this up during one of his windchill factor tirades
("Now that you mention it...") and he said maybe
hed bumped into HALLEYS Comet. Discussion over.

This brings me somehow or other to the topic of
tryptophan. I never heard of tryptophan until maybe 10 years ago.
What is tryptophan? Tryptophan is the long-awaited
answer to a question nobody was asking: "How come I feel so
wiped out after Thanksgiving dinner?" Nobody was asking this
because the answer appeared to be self evidentit would have
been like asking, "How come it hurts when I hit myself in
the head with a hammer?" or "Why does everybody in the
car go Eeeewwww! when we run over the dead
skunk?" (A BETTER question might have been, "Geez, Dad,
how did you manage to run over that dead skunk on the way to Aunt
Janes AND on the way back?" But the answer would have
been "I guess I was blinded by HALLEYS comet La-de-da!
Woo-woo!" So even though it was a better question, we never
asked that one, either).

Everyone always thought we were wiped out after
Thanksgiving dinner because wed eaten too much. After all,
when I was six, I ate myself into a stupor by devouring an entire
box of Milkbone™ dog biscuits. But it turns out that what
knocks everybody out is TRYPTOPHAN. Tryptophan is an enzyme that
makes you sleepy, or at least TURKEY tryptophan does. Its
unclear from my researches (which, technically, have not actually
occurred) whether turkeys always contained this stuff or whether
its added to their diet just so everybody in America can be
completely unfit to drive on the BIGGEST TRAVEL DAY OF THE YEAR.
You think Im kidding? ONE SERVING of turkey contains so
much tryptophan that youd have to drink THREE SIX PACKS OF
BEER to be that impaired. Two servings is equivalent to three
weeks in an opium den. Three servings, and you might as well
remove your brain and stick a sofa cushion in your skull, because
that will function as well as your brain at that point. Im
not making this upthese are scientific facts, possibly.

Assuming this so-called Tryptophan
really exists. Im not convinced. It sure doesnt work
on kidsthey can eat all the turkey you can stuff down their
throats, and they still bounce off the walls like the bird was
stuffed with amphetamines.

For another thing, the name sounds totally
fake. It sounds like some drug Jack Webb made up for one of those
episodes of "Dragnet" where Sgt. Friday raids a
hippies pad.

FRIDAY: The kids say it sends you on a
groovy trip. But theres one thing they
didnt tell this kid.

GANNON: Whats that, Joe?

FRIDAY: Sometimes its a one-way trip.
(They shake their heads as hippie is lead away in a straight
jacket).

And this is what theyre putting in our
turkeys! Whatever happened to GOOD enzymes? They stayed in our
detergents like they were supposed to and made our whites whiter
and our colors brighter. Now THOSE were enzymes, dagnabbit.

*

A
CABIN IN THE WOODS

My mother was sighing that it was barely going
to be Thanksgiving at all this year, what with her sister Alma
and family relocated to Texas, and her sister Jane and family
visiting Uncle Charlies relatives in Upstate New York. I
was watching "The Flintstones" and eating tiny little
pepperoni pizzas the size of silver dollars. My Uncle Tug, who
had stopped by to drop off the jumper cables hed borrowed
from my dad, was watching the TV but talking to my mother.

"Well, you could have dinner at... hey,
you know this show is like "The Honeymooners," only
its a cartoon? These guys belong to a lodge just like Ralph
and Norton. What was the lodge Ralph and Norton belonged
to?"

"The Raccoons," said my mother.
"What were you saying about dinner?"

"Nah, I ate already, thanks. Amos and
Andy, they went to some lodge to, didnt they? The Mystic...
The Mystic something..."

"The Mystic Knights of the Sea," said
my mother.

"Yeah! You know, its like EVERY SHOW
IS THE SAME SHOW. Its two doofy guys and they belong to a
lodge."

"I mean about Thanksgiving dinner,"
said my mother.

"Oh yeah. I was gonna say, if you wanted
to do something a little different, you could have Thanksgiving
at my place in the woods. You know, a real old fashioned kind of
Thanksgiving with an open fire place and all that stuff."

"Really?" said my mother. "That
sounds like fun."

"You oughta do it," said Tug. "I
got no plans. Itll be family fun. Listen, I got to
run."

"Wait!" I said. "What about
Bonanza? Its FOUR GUYS, and no lodge!"

"I gotta think about that," said
Uncle Tug. He left and Im certain he never thought about it
again.

"What about Little
Women," said my sister Pam. "Its all
girls!"

"Youre an idiot," I said.
"Thats a MOVIE."

"MOM!" My sister was six year older
than I was (and I was about 11 at the time) but she was utterly
helpless in the face of my relentless logic.

When my father got home my mother told him that
Tug had invited us to share Thanksgiving dinner at his place in
the woods. My father had been up there once and said he thought
it would be an excellent idea. Later my mother called Tug and
asked if she should bring a pie up to the cabin.
"Absolutely, if you like pie," hed said.
"Bring whatever. Its your call." And what time
should we be there? "Up to you. Depends on what time you
wanna eat, right?"

"Well, what if we get there at two
oclock?"

"Itll be there," said Tug.

But at two oclock on Thanksgiving Day, we
were on the road and had been for several hours. My dad had been
to the cabin once and was absolutely certain he knew how to get
there again, so he saw no need to ask Tug for directions. Even
after another hour of driving through what seemed like several
different forests, he saw no need to ask for directions.

"Its right up this street," he
said. He slowed down and steered the 55 Bel-Air onto an
unmarked side road so narrow that branches scraped against both
sides of the car. "Its like going through the car
wash," said my sister, "except theres no soap and
water!"

"And no building," I pointed out.
"Yeah, its EXACTLY like going through the car wash. Or
you could say its like going through a bowl of cereal, only
theres no milk or cereal."

"MOM! Hes being SARCASTIC!"

"And also no bowl," I said, "to
make the comparison absolutely perfect."

"MOM!"

"Stop being sarcastic," said my
mother. "Its Thanksgiving." The gravel road had
now given way to a dirt road and my father was no longer quite as
sure that we were on the right path. He said the game plan was to
turn off as soon as we came to an intersection and make a right,
which would put us definitely going where we wanted to go. The
flaw in this game plan turned out to be a complete absence of
intersections. Eventually the dirt road gave way to underbrush,
and we drove for a while over that until my father conceded the
road had ended a ways back. He put the car into reverse and we
traversed the entire length of the unmarked road backwards, very
slowly. My father was humming "All or Nothing at All,"
and no one spoke until we were out of the woods and back on the
main road.

"There was a gas station back there about
two miles," my mother said.

"I KNOW where we are," said my father
in a jovial voice that was belied by the pulsing vein in his
temple.

"Yes, dear," said my mother.
"But I need to use the ladies room."

My father opened his mouth but said nothing.
"I need to use the ladies room," my mother
repeated.

"Well," said my father, "If you
need to use the ladies room..."

"And I do..."

"Then leave us proceed forthwith to yonder
gas station."

We pulled up to the pumps. My mother got out of
the car and asked the gas jockey, "Excuse me. Were
looking for Bassetville Road."

"I KNEW it!" cried my father,
pounding the wheel with his fist. "I KNEW it!" My
mother and the gas jockey spoke for about three minutes, and then
she got back in the car. "Were in Delaware," she
said. "You know, I didnt THINK you could drive for
four and a half hours and still be in New Jersey. Those woods
back there were in Maryland."

"Then where was the SIGN?" demanded
my father.

"I dont know. Maybe they didnt
feel it was necessary to stick a Welcome to Maryland
sign on every single sticker bush. You know these crazy
politicians."

We crossed some state lines and re-entered New
Jersey. It was getting dark. "Tug must be worried to death
about us," said my mother. "We should call him
and..." She reflected that he would be at the cabin, without
a phone. She sighed, imagining Tug alone in the cabin waiting for
the guests who never arrive, like Charley Chaplin in "The
Gold Rush." She had my dad pull over to the shoulder and she
cut up the pie. Although generally we were forbidden to eat in
the car, an exception was made, since this was Thanksgiving. When
we pulled into a rest stop to throw out the napkins and wax
paper, something about the place made the right relays click in
my dads brain. The cabin, he swore, was two right turns
away.

The second turn was indeed Bassetville Road.
There was a little logging road off it, and Tugs cabin was
waiting at the end. Dark and clearly empty.

"Did he go home?" said my mother.

"I dunno," said my father. "No.
Nobodys been here for a while."

"I hope Tug is okay," said my mother.
We were home in just under an hour and she quickly picked up the
phone.

"Tug!" she said when he picked up.

"Hiya, Annie. How was the cabin? You have
a good time?"

"Tug, you werent there!"

"Nah, I had PLANS. I didnt wanna
intrude, anyhow. You get the fire goin okay?"

My mother was speechless, more or less. We
heated up the meatloaf from Tuesday. There was a long pause
before grace, when we were all supposed to be thinking of things
to be thankful for. "My thoughts were going in other
directions," my father confessed later, speaking, I think,
for all of us.

Cold Comfort

The cold snap hit while I was searching for a
job. Some people might dispute my right to use the word
searching, since my search consisted of occasionally
glancing at the want ads my girl friend circled and left on my
kitchen table, following which I would decide, for one reason or
another, not to call any of the them. But to be fair, if any of
the advertisers had called ME and offered a job, I would have
certainly heard them out.

It was just too cold to go outside. It was only
late November, but the temperature was well below freezing. When
I woke up in the morning there was ice on the windows of my
ground floor apartment, and the ice remained there until early
afternoon, when the sunlight hit it directly for 45 minutes or
so.

After a couple of weeks of this I finally saw a
want ad worthy of a response. It was not the want ad my girl
friend had circled in red and further decorated with arrows and
exclamation marks. No, the ad that caught my attention requested
volunteers for unfolding the huge Thanksgiving Day Parade
balloons on the evening prior to that event. Never before had I
seen help sought for this, and never since. I suspect the
sub-zero weather had scared off the previously committed
volunteers. Or anyway the sane ones.

Volunteer is a word with ominous
overtones ("unpaid," for instance) but the work itself
sounded interesting and a hot meal was promised on the night
itself, so I put on pretty much every piece of clothing I could
find and hiked uptown to the grounds of the Museum of Natural
History to apply. A fellow covered in so much Gore-Tex that he
looked like the Michelin Tire Man directed usus
was roughly a dozen volunteers, nowhere near the number they
would need to a vast sheet of mylar, or rubber, or
rubberized canvas, or whatever the balloons would be made out of.
He lined us up and explained how to unfold this material.
Incredibly, the material seemed colder than the ambient
temperature. We could not make it unbend to our will. Nobody
wanted to be the first one to punk out so we were there much
longer than we wanted to be, but eventually somebody groaned,
"Thats it for me!" and we all left at once.

Although this hadnt turned out well, my
girlfriend saw the abortive balloon unfolding venture as a sign
of better things to come, and as a reward, sewed me a
window snake. This was a corduroy tube filled with
beans or cotton or something, and it was intended to seal up my
kitchen window. The window had been painted shut, but not quite:
there was a ¼ of an inch of open air between the bottom of the
window and the sill. A lot of heat escaped through that quarter
inch, and the snake remedied that to a substantial degree.

I had a lot of problems with the heat. My
radiator got very hot, but did not really radiate. Maybe it
radiated in instead of out. I would prop my boots on it and read
(generally very long books about Martians) and once I fell asleep
and the rubber melted off the heels of my boots. So the radiator
must have been very hot, and yet my toes were still numb from the
cold. The snake helped with this sort of thing, but not enough,
and I decided to scrape off the paint and close the window all
the way.

It turned out that the paint was the only thing
keeping the window shut at all. Once the paint was gone, I could
close it, but it would suddenly spring open6 inches, 3
inches, ten inchesat unpredictable moments. When this
happened, it would make a scring! sound and the
temperature would instantly drop thirty degrees. Frost would form
on the snake. I thought about nailing the window shut, but the
wood was so rotten this was out of the question.

I thought I had solved the problem by wedging
playing cards into the space between the two halves of the
window, but one morning I heard the familiar scring,
cursed, got out of bed, walked over to shut the window, and found
myself face to face with a junkie. We stood on either side of the
open window blinking at each other for a few seconds. I assumed
he was the same junkie who had robbed me a few months earlier and
left me a note in Spanish, apologizing for taking my guitar. So I
told him to get lost, in Spanish. His face twisted up and he
snarled: "Hey, man, if youre gonna live here, learn to
speak ENGLISH!" I demonstrated that I spoke excellent
English, using in fact several words that had been in the
language since Anglo-Saxon times. In reply he grabbed the snake
and put it into his sack full of stolen toaster ovens and TV sets
and disappeared down the alley, like a reverse Santa Claus. My
apartment was now about 20 degrees Fahrenheit and not getting any
warmer. I forced the window down and re-wedged the cards.

I hit the local pawnshops in search of the
window snake but had no luck. Window snakes were hard to fence, I
surmised. Then as I passed the Russian church half a block from
my apartment, I saw my window snake sitting on the inside
windowsill of what must have been the priests study.
"Its MINE!" I screamed. The priest did not bother
to look up. People in my neighborhood were always screaming
"Its MINE!" I saw a patrol car parked by the
corner and ran down to explain to the cops what had happened. If
I had stuck to the factsi.e., my window snake was stolen by
a junkie and now it was in the window of the Russian
churchthey probably would have assumed that the junkie had
tossed it away and that the priest had found it and used it to
insulate his leaky window. Maybe they would have explained the
situation to the priest and he might have even returned my snake.
But what I said was, "Officers! The RUSSIAN PRIEST sent a
JUNKIE out to ROB my apartment! He STOLE MY SNAKE!!" They
werelets sayunsympathetic.

Just like my girlfriend. She felt I had
violated her trust by letting (her word) the junkie
steal the snake. "And if you hadnt sworn at him and
honked him off, you probably could have hired him to steal it
back from the priest." Since the only reply I could think of
was, If I hadnt sworn at him and honked him off, he
wouldnt have stolen it in the first place," I
didnt say anything.

Later that week, the balloons got aloft on
Thanksgiving without my help. I watched the parade on my portable
back and white TV set until so much ice formed on the antenna
that I couldnt pick up the signal any more.

EMMAIN2020

[In which I phone my daughter to ask whether
the money I deposited in her account arrived, and she attempts to
talk politics...]

EMMA: The money is not there. Put in more
money. Are you interviewing me?

ME: I could. What do you want to talk about?

EMMA: The election.

ME: Old news now, Im afraid.

EMMA: Not THIS election. The 2020 election. The
one IM going to run in.

ME: The one...

EMMA: Im going to run in AND win handily.
I have all these angry away messages now, because all
these people are upset I didnt name them to my cabinet.

ME: Away messages?

EMMA: Hel-LO. When people Instant Message me
and Im not there. I listed all the people Im going to
put in the cabinet on my AIM profile. Brittany is really mad
shes not in the cabinet. "Im your
HOMEGIRL," she said. But all I had open when I got to her
name...

ME: What do you mean, got to her name?

EMMA: In my address book, when I was figuring
out who to put where. The only position I had to fill when I got
to Brittany was Secretary of Commerce and I couldnt see her
THERE.

ME: Who did you see there?

EMMA: Mariska Hargaty.

ME: The actress? From Law and Order
SVU?

EMMA: No, the TOOTHPASTE. Yes, the actress. And
when you write it down dont put Law and Order
SUV like last time. Thats a car. Shes
Hungarian, and she should have won the Emmy. Im not
knocking Alison Janey, but it should have been Mariska.

ME: How is it you have Mariska Hargaty in your
address book?

EMMA: Shes not. EVERYBODY in the cabinet
is not going to be my personal friend. That would be an
invitation to... um...

ME: Insanity?

EMMA: No, but something bad. Anyway it assures
me of the Hungarian vote.

ME: Right, youve got to nail down that
all-important Hungarian vote.

EMMA: Go ahead and make fun of it, but...

ME: What other non-friends did you put in your
cabinet?

EMMA: Just Mariska. She should have won the
Emmy.

ME: I see.

EMMA: Its a very non-partisan cabinet.
Democrats AND Republicans and whatever Mariska is. H. Mac is
going to be my Homeland Security Advisor.

ME: Who is...

EMMA: H. Mac is HEATHER. You remember. She
borrowed your Nietzsche book three years ago.

ME: Ah. Since she borrowed it, I
assume Im going to get it back, then.

EMMA: You know what they say about
assume making an ass of u and
me.

ME: Well, I guess I approve of a Homeland
Security Advisor who knows her Nietzsche.

EMMA: Actually I think she switched her major
from philosophy to... um... some other thing. Anyway, the rumor
is, she postponed her SORORITY MEETING to confirm her
appointment.

ME: What do you mean the rumor is?

EMMA: I mean thats what she did. We
politicos say things like rumor has it because
thats the way we talk. My veep is going to be Inna.
Shes Russian.

ME: Of Russian descent, you mean?

EMMA: No, she was born there.

ME: I think since the only vice presidential
function mentioned in the constitution is hanging around in case
something happens to the president, the vice president would have
to be native born, just like the president.

EMMA: Well, she AGREED to be veep, so that
cant be right. She wouldnt have agreed if she
couldnt do it. Originally I was going to have her be
Defense but people got honked off so I made her veep. Then people
started campaigning and like one girl got people to IM me to
endorse her? So I appointed Inna. People said you
wont win the Bible Belt if Innas your running
mate, but I WILL. Now Gamble is Defense. Hes strong
on borders and stuff and a Republican. Hes scary, which is
good in a Secretary of Defense. And my Secretary of Interior is,
um... Hey, before I forget, mention the Chocolate bulldog I
followed, okay?

ME: Sure. What about Interior?

EMMA: Im THINKING. I saw "Love
Story." Whats up with that? Ali McGraw is a beast. It
made no sense. It was like "When Harry Met Sally" which
didnt make sense because Billy Crystal was so ugly. Do you
think I can get elected?

ME: Depends on who your Secretary of the
Interior is.

EMMA: Its, um... hes down the hall.
Hes South African. I forget his name...

ME: You have a lot of people in your cabinet
who seem to be, how shall I say, not American...

EMMA: Well, do you know how many cabinet posts
there are? What should I have done, put BRITTANY there? In
COMMERCE? Please! Hey, mention Michelles roommate. We think
shes a serial killer. She drinks tea with vicodin in it,
which is a drug and her boy friend... Well, she shouldnt
even HAVE a boyfriend, it makes no sense. Anyway, HES
addicted to Godsmack.

ME: Is that another drug?

EMMA: No. Its the worst band ever. Oh,
wait. Can we talk about Tara Reids boob?

ME: Not for publication, no.

EMMA: But... all right. Fine.

ME: Did you say boob, singular?

EMMA: Too late. Did you get my email about what
you should buy me on eBay?

ME: Any email with eBay in the
subject line is automatically deleted before I see it.

EMMA: But thats stupid! Half the emails I
send you have eBay in the subject line!

ME: Huh. Imagine that.

EMMA: Well, I wanted you to get me the Bayside
Tigers hoodie. Thats the team from Saved by the
Bell. Have you mentioned my tattoo yet?

ME: What tattoo.

EMMA: Um. Nothing.

ME: No, no. I want to know...

EMMA: Its a HYPOTHETICAL tattoo, okay?
Im sure I mentioned this before. I want to get a tattoo of
the bar-code for "Atlas Shrugged."

ME: Oh. Yes, I think we covered that before.
What was that about Michelles roommate being a serial
killer?

EMMA: You had to be there.

ME: Is she going to be in your cabinet?

EMMA: Not for my first term. Oh, I
forgotget me Pepsi. You can get like a twelve pack at
WalMart for two dollars. If I buy it in the city itll run
me five dollars, honest. Did I tell you on Halloween I saw a
black French bulldog in a costume? I followed it.

ME: What kind of a costume?

EMMA: A small one. I have to go now.

UN-DEBASING THE
CULTURE

"I am anxious," wrote longtime reader
C. K. of Pittstown, "to have your thoughts on this, and on
what should be done about it." This was a
hyperlink, which brought me to a wire service article about the
years most popular childrens Halloween costumes.

The years most popular Halloween
costumes, it said, were pimps and hos. I
blinked several times and then I Googled "Halloween
costumes" "pimps." I got 3490 hits. Some were news
articles ("Trick or Treat 2004: 'Pimp and Ho' Kids
Provocative Costumes for Children Spark Outrage Among Some
Parents") and some were websites which sold the costumes in
question.

"I shudder to think," my
correspondent continued, "which side of this you will come
down on. I suppose you will find this amusing."

Well, you are mistaken. In fact I find the
whole thing reprehensible. Dressing up a kid as a pimp or ho
shows an appalling lack of taste.

I know that some of you just spit your coffee
all over the editorial page. Some of you always do when I accuse
someone else of displaying an appalling lack of taste. "Good
grief," you say, "Year after year you write about
trick-or-treating while dressed as the most DISGUSTING creatures
imaginable! Youve written that you sometimes spent three
hours mixing and remixing the ingredients for your fake
blood so that it would be just the right color and
consistency dripping out of your faux-gaping head wound (in which
the meat cleaver was STILL EMBEDDED, for Petes sake!!). And
yet you have the GALL to say that dressing up your kid as a PIMP
DADDY is TASTLESS??"

A: That is correct. In fact, its
not just tasteless. It debases the culture.

Q: Dressing as a pimp debases the culture,
but dressing as a flesh-eating animated corpse with a
meat cleaver sticking out of your skull DOESNT
debase the culture??

A: Nope.

Q: Why not?

A: Because it doesnt.

Q: Why not?

A: BECAUSE, thats why!!

Q: Thats not even an
arguOW! You kicked me in the shin!! What do
youOW! Stop that!!

NEW VOICE: Hey youstop kicking
my grandma!!

A: Whos gonna make me,
Four-eyes? Anybody else want a piece a me?? How about
YOU?? Or YOU??

Ahem. The point isone moment while I put
the lava lamp back downthe point is, pimps and
hos have NOTHING to do with Halloween.

Now there have always been some children who
have gone trick-or-treating as non-monsters. We have all had the
disheartening experience of opening our doors on Halloween,
joyfully anticipating a snarling werewolf, a rotting animated
corpse, a cackling witch. Instead we find ourselves confronted
by... a ballerina. Or a hobo. Or a superhero.

And we do our best to disguise our
disappointment, we say, "Ooooh, what a pretty
ballerina!" and we drop a little packet of candy corns into
the open bag. We shut the door and we shake our heads. Its
not, we tell ourselves, the fault of the child. Its the
decline of the culture. Once upon a timeand it wasnt
all that long agoeveryone knew that Halloween was about
witches, Frankenstein monsters, and insane, chainsaw-wielding
psychopaths. Oh sure, even back then youd get the
occasional princess. But you knew the poor kids had screwed-up
parents. I mean, these were obviously the same kids who came to
school in poodle skirts and white bucks when it WASNT
Halloween. You just knew their moms were exactly like Sissy
Spaceks mother in "Carrie," only with better
southern accents and fewer telekinetically-inflicted knife
wounds.

But for all that, it never got to the point we
have reached today, where the most popular Halloween costume is a
non-monster.

Well, what is the solution? Is there some way
to have it both ways? Can we dress our children up in the pimp
and ho costumes they covet, and yet still preserve our precious
Halloween traditions?

Yes.

The solution occurred to me while I was channel
surfing the other day around 3 AM and came across the classic
film "Vampire Hookers," starring the late John
Carradine. I had seen this in the theaters 25 years ago and I had
not been overly impressed with it, although I do recall wondering
how the leading lady managed to stand upright, but now I realized
the title itself supplied the answer to all the problems we have
been contemplating this week. After all, before you become a
vampire (or werewolf, or flesh-eating zombie), you have to be
something else. The law of averages suggests that there are a lot
more vampire plumbers, gas station attendants, and computer
programmers than vampire counts. Just as surely, there is nothing
inherently absurd about a WEREWOLF pimp-daddy or a decaying
flesh-eating zombie ho. There are probably plenty of
both; indeed, science suggests that, if anything, people in such
professions are even more susceptible to being infected by
werewolfism or vampirism than are (say) dental receptionists or
aluminum siding salesmen.

So if your 8-year-old absolutely HAS to go
trick-or-treating in a pimp outfit, theres no need to wring
your hands. Just say something like, "Youre looking
extra fly all right, Otis, but I think it needs just
one more thing to give it total street cred."
And thats when you produce the plastic fangs. (Or, if you
want to go for the ever-so-chic fifties Japanese monster movie
look, you could have a second head sprouting from the shoulder of
your lil Pimp Daddy, a la "The Manster." This is
totally appropriate. But for the classic look, fangs are
definitely the way to go).

Remember, for vampires, the teeth point DOWN,
for werewolves the teeth point UP. Some traditons must be
preserved at all costs! Take back the culture NOW!!

THE
LEGENDARY PROFILE

The Dick Smith Monster Make-up Book had been published that
summer, just as we were gearing up for Halloween. Dick Smith was
a professional Hollywood make-up artist and his book was a
copiously illustrated step-by-step guide to making yourself or
your friends look exactly like a real Hollywood-type monster;
everything from mummies and vampires and rotting corpses to
genetic mutants and space creatures with extra eyeballs. It
contained invaluable tips about making great looking fake scars--
morticians wax would work for raised scars, and you could
embed shards of glass or razor blades in it; non-flexible
collodion from your local drug store could be brushed on and
then, when dry, would make state-of-the-art sunken scars, though
if you smiled they would crack off. As you can see, wisdom of
this caliber stays with you a lifetime.

The book started off with simple make-up jobs and climaxed
with an amazing version of Frankensteins Monster. Smith had
gone back to Mary Shelleys novel and discovered that her
monster looked nothing like the familiar Boris Karloff version;
The jolt of electricity that brings the creature to life had
jellied the skin of the face, made it translucent and yellow, and
the veins and muscles were visible beneath it. This image had
inspired Smith, and he created a remarkably hideous Frankenstein
Monster.

We were all going to go out for Halloween as Dick Smiths
version of the Monster. Calvano, Picarillo, and I were all going
to get started gluing red and blue yarn to our faces (to simulate
the pulsing veins and arteries) as soon as we got home from
school; Dick Smith had estimated that the make-up job would take
4 hours, if done correctly. We had managed to get all the
necessary ingredients a good week before hand, and had done a
preliminary monster face on Picarillo to make sure it looked
good. It looked great. We were confident that, with a little
practice, we could get our faces on in less than three hours and
be on the street before six. The stuff we used to make
Picarillos translucent skin (corn syrup, gelatin, and egg
whites were among the many ingredients) tended to melt under the
heat of the high intensity lamp we were using so we could see
what we were doing, but we assumed that the stuff would be stable
on a cool late October evening.

Then, two days before Halloween, Picarillo got sick. He had a
horrible cold, bad enough so that his Mom actually kept him home
from school; his nose was gunked up, his face was blotchy, he
couldnt even drag himself out of bed to watch "Rat
Patrol."

"Ibe stiw goink owp for Allo weed," Picarillo vowed
when Calvano and I called on him.

"Thats the spirit," said Calvano. "You
wont even need make-up. You look really disgusting as
is."

Picarillo beamed.

But it was obvious to me and Calvano that Picarillos
mother would not let him out of the house in his current state.
"Youre going to have to pull yourself together and
make it to school tomorrow," I said. "Your mom
isnt going to keep you home from school and then send you
out at night."

"Ill dake gare ob id," he said. His eyes
burned with a fiery determination that betokened hundreds of
millions of brain cells being charred to burnt carbon in the
furnace of Picarillos skull.

He did not make it to school on Halloween.

Calvano and I stopped by his home after school to see what, if
anything was up. Picarillo was even sicker than before. His
pillow was soaked with sweat, his eyes were red, the floor around
his bed was covered with used tissue paper.

"Well?" said Calvano. "Are you coming or
not?"

"Ob gorse Ib gumming," said Picarillo. He wrenched
himself out of bed, hung onto the bedpost to keep from falling to
the floor, and cried, "Bob! Bob!"

"Whos Bob?" I said.

"Dot Bob, BOB! Ib galling by buther."

"His mother," explained Calvano.

"Bob! Good dews! By feber brogue! I feel find! I can go
owd for Alloweed!"

Picarillos mom was delighted by this news.
"Im so happy about your miracle cure. Get back in bed,
you moron."

"She dint buy id," Picarillo said sadly. Calvano and
I helped him back into bed. The bedclothes, we noted with
approval, were littered with Frito crumbs. "Bake be ub eddy
way," said Picarillo. "Eben if I gant go owd, I still
wanda bead a Bonster for Alloweed."

"Youre too sweaty and gross," said Calvano.
"Everything would just slide off your face."

"I thawed yoog eyes were by frengs," said Picarillo.

"We are your frengs," said Calvano.

"Well glue the veins and arteries to your
face," I said, "but thats as far as we go. We
gotta get ready ourselves."

"Yoog eyes are grade," said Picarillo. Calvano
opened his big Macys shopping bag and took out a jar of
glue. He had a coil of red yarn soaking in the glue, and, while I
held the Dick Smith make-up book open, he began applying this to
Picarillos face. This took rather more time than usual,
because every time Picarillo sneezed, he blew the veins and
arteries off his face.

"You good pood sub muscles odd by face, too," said
Picarillo.

"Cmon," said Calvano, "We aint got
all night."

"I good be dying," said Picarillo.

We began applying the sub-dermal musculature to
Picarillos face. This was a very time-consuming process.
Picarillos mother came into the room with Picarillos
medicine. "He just wants to greet a few trick-or-treaters at
the door in his full Frankenstein make-up," Calvano
explained. "Hes not too sick for that, is he?"
Picarillos mother said she guessed it was all right, but
wed better not get any of this glop on the sheets. To be
safe, we packed paper towels around Picarillos head.

We were now committed to completing Picarillos make-up.
There would not be time to do two more Frankensteins before dark.
I began mixing up the disgusting yellow translucent skin in
Picarillos bathroom. We could hear trick-or-treaters
ringing the bell downstairs.

By now Picarillo had fallen asleep, or perhaps lapsed into a
coma, and the last stages of the Frankenstein face went on with
little fuss. Picarillos mother wandered into the room from
time to time, shook her head, and walked out. "I let your
parents know youre over here," she said at one point.
We nodded, busily deforming her son.

When we finished, it was obvious that we had a masterpiece on
our hands. Calvano thought Picarillo looked far grosser than the
photos in the Dick Smith make-up book. We woke Picarillo and
walked him down the stairs. He moaned in a convincingly
Frankensteinish voice that he just wanted to sleep. "Just
greet ONE lousy trick-or-treater," said Calvano.
"Youll scare some kid to death. Itll be
great."

When the bell rang, Calvano threw the door wide. A kid in a
Casper the Friendly Ghost mask stared up at the tottering,
repulsive form of Picarillo. Picarillo looked down at the kid.
The kid opened his bag wide. Picarillos face dropped into
the bag with a horrible splat. The kid screamed. Picarillo rocked
unsteadily in the doorway, said something that sounded like
"Ib dubba zig," and then threw up into the still-open
bag. The kid screamed again, and began punching Picarillo in the
stomach. "You big fat goon!" the kid said, pummeling
Picarillo. The kid was 6 years old, tops, but Picarillo was no
match for him in his weakened condition. Mrs. Picarillo had to
pull the kid off her son and throw him out. He pounded on the
door for ten minutes before he gave up, screaming some remarkably
accomplished invective the whole time.

"Just think," Calvano said much later, "We did
the greatest Frankenstein make-up of all time, and the only
person who saw it didnt even appreciate it. Its like
a parable of art."

"Yuh," I said.

JERSEY PUMPKINS

I had no one to blame but myself. All that
Mulberry Street Joey Clams wanted was a pumpkin, and any pumpkin
at the vegetable stand down the block would have been fine. It
was a couple of weeks before Halloween and he just wanted a
pumpkin to carve into a jack olantern and stick in the
window of the Custom Neon Sign Shop. But every time he picked one
up Id say, "Geez, in JERSEY they wouldnt even
let em sell a pumpkin that small. Its a fifty-dollar
fine for trying to sell a pumpkin that weighs less than 35
pounds. Fact."

Each time I said this he gave me the fisheye
and told me I was full of it, but he inevitably put the pumpkin
back.

"Fifty bucks a pound," I elaborated.
"In Jersey, they take the whole pumpkin thing seriously. All
vegetables, but pumpkins especially. Its The Garden
State."

"Yeah, yeah, Ive seen the license
plates," he said. We were now visiting our third vegetable
stand and had come across no pumpkins of Jersey quality. "It
never made any sense, because The Garden is on 34th
Street. But I figured they meant most of the season ticket
holders were from Jersey. I figured they were rubbin our
noses in it. But youre saying theyre talking about
GARDEN gardens? Like tomatoes?"

"Absolutely," I said. "In fact,
these pumpkins youre looking at here, in Jersey, these
would be moderately passable tomatoes. In size, I mean."

"What a stupid thing to put on a license
plate. We got lotsa GARDENS. Its like something
the Donato kid would say." The Donato kid was always saying
things like, I know the names of all the crayons! or
Three days ago I ate a chocolate donut. Two days ago I ate
a SECOND chocolate donut. Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I
suspected something might be amiss with the Donato kid. His
comparing my home state with this unfortunate youth did not sit
well with me, and I was working up a devastating
comebacksomething along the lines of "Oh yeah? Well,
South Carolina is called The Palmetto
State!when Mulberry Street Joey Clams took his hand
from the (quite huge) pumpkin hed been contemplating and
said, "Okay! Were going for the real deal! None of
these pathetic cripple pumpkins is good enough to be the official
Custom Neon Sign Shop NEON PUMPKIN. Lets go!"

I had no time to absorb that ominous neon
pumpkin stuff before I found myself behind the wheel of the
Custom Neon Sign Shop van, taking Mulberry Street Joey Clams on
his first ever visit to the magical state of New Jersey, where
vegetables the size of Volkswagens awaited us.

"Whoa! Incredible!" said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams as we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel into the
blinding Garden State sunshine. "Its like a whole
other world! Theres, like, ROCKS!!"

"Welcome to Weehawken," I said. I
moved into an exit lane and in short order the van was chugging
down the streets of Hoboken, the most densely populated city in
the most densely populated state in America.

"So this is what its like in the
country," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams, nodding
appreciatively at the rural apartment houses and rustic office
buildings and bucolic fast food restaurants that stretched out in
all directions as far as the eye could see (roughly 6 blocks).
"Its not exactly the way I pictured it... you know,
like the way farms look on TV."

I nodded. Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I were
both fervent admirers of the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons that ran on
Channel 5 each afternoon at 3 PM, usually a non-busy hour at the
Custom Neon Sign Shop. "This guy kills me," Mulberry
Street Joey Clams would say when Foghorn Leghorn whacked a
sleeping hound in the rear end with a 2 X 4. I hadnt
realized till now that this sort of thing provided Mulberry
Street Joey Clams with his entire frame of reference vis-à-vis
farms.

"Hey!" he cried. "Look over
thereon that stoop. Theres a pumpkin thats no
biggern the ones we were lookin at on Broome Street.
Whats goin on?"

"Its a snob thing," I said.
"That guy obviously went into New York to buy his pumpkin.
Its a lot smaller than a Jersey pumpkin, but its
from, you know, The Big City, so he thinks hes, you know, a
hep cat."

"Gotcha," said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams. "Like people who go to restaurants and order
non-Italian food and pretend it tastes good."

"Exactly."

"Well, we need the biggest pumpkin we can
findI got this idea. Little letters." He sat back with
a satisfied smile. "Did you hear what I said? Little
letters. What do you think?"

"Um," I said.

"Im talking about IN the
pumpkin."

I didnt say um because I was
allowed only one um per conversation with Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. If I broke the One Um rule, he got
testy. But um was the only response that seemed to
make any sense, so I was silent.

"Little letters! Like in one eye,
Happy and in the other eye Halloween. You
following me?"

"You want tiny little neon letters inside
the pumpkin eyes," I said.

"Right. And the bigger the pumpkin, the
bigger the eyes, so the bigger the letters. Little tiny letters
in little tiny eyes would be cute, but Im not totally sure
we could pull it off."

Since about 70% of our full size neon signs
either did not light up at all or blew apart when they were
plugged in, I was not totally sure we could pull it off either,
and said so. "You got a bad attitude," said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, "and not the GOOD kinda bad attitude,
like me. Yo! Stop the truck!"

I pulled to the curb. A scarecrow of sorts had
caught Mulberry Street Joey Clams eye. Nothing
specialjust a pair of pants and a shirt stuffed with
newspaper and straw, topped by a jack olantern, the whole
thing sitting on a folding chair at the entrance to a small
apartment building. The building janitor was finishing it off
with a straw hat, tilting it at various angles.

"Thats what I want," said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. He was barely breathing.

"Its not even a particularly big
pumpkin," I pointed out.

"Its a pumpkin GUY," he said.
"Ive seen the heads in the city alla time, but out
here they got the whole GUY. Ask the farmer there how much for
the whole thing."

"Mulberry Street Joey Clams, its a
three dollar pumpkin and some old clothes! We could just..."

"Offer him twenty bucks," said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "Lookit the smile! It goes UP
and then DOWN, like a sideways S!"

There was nothing I could say to that, not even
um. I got out and told the janitor there was a crazy
guy in the van who wanted the pumpkin head guy and was offering
twenty dollars. The janitor said, "Sold!" I went back
to the van and told Mulberry Street Joey Clams the janitor wanted
fifty bucks. The sale went through for $35, although the janitor
absolutely refused to let us have the folding chair.

I did my best to convince Mulberry Street Joey
Clams to put the pumpkin guy in the window of the Custom Neon
Sign Shop but he insisted on propping it up on a stool by the
front door, right on the sidewalk, "Jersey style," as
he put it. It was a terrible idea. I think some kid stole the
head before we even got back in the shop. "We could just buy
a new pumpkin," I said, "and put the whole thing
inside," but Mulberry Street Joey Clams said, "Not with
that SMILE." His heart was broken. The headless pumpkin guy
sat in front of the store for two days before somebody walked off
with the clothes.

ASK THE
COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

Do you remember how, back during the 500th
anniversary of Columbus first voyage, they released all
those movies (Well, two, anyhow) that kind of made him look like
a creep? Now that we have celebrated the 512th
anniversary, I think it is maybe time for some new movies in
which Columbus is shown to be a cool guy after all and not a
creep. What do you think?

(signed)

Didnt like the movies where Columbus was
kind of a creep

DEAR DIDNT:

I agree wholeheartedly. And amazingly,
Hollywood agrees with us! One idea the folks in tinseltown are
kicking around is a gritty urban mystery where Columbus (Jim
Belushi) is a streetwise but sloppy older cop in LA who gets
teamed up with a visiting Hong Kong detective (Jackie Chan).
Readers are invited to send in their own suggestions, although
not to me.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

Isnt columbus a type of
cloud? And if so, which came first, the cloud or the man?

(signed)

Man or cloud

DEAR MAN:

There is no cloud called columbus.
You may be thinking of cumulus. As individual cumulus
clouds last only a matter of hours at best, the man Columbus
predated any current cumulus cloud. On the other hand, cumulus
clouds as in general have been around for eons, long before the
birth of Columbus.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

I have heard news anchors refer to Columbus as
"Christopher Colon." Was that his real name? Why do we
call him Columbus, if so?

(signed)

Confused

DEAR CONFUSED:

You misheard the news anchors in
question. They were calling Columbus Colón, not
colon. A colon is the reason why you want to make sure you eat
plenty of fiber. Anyway, Colón is not really
Columbus read name. His birth name was Bernard Schwartz.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

I do not think Columbus, Ohio deserves to be
called "Columbus." There are a lot of much more
deserving cities in the US. Did they win a lottery or what?

(signed)

Suspects they won a lottery or something

DEAR SUSPECTS:

Yes, they won a lottery. No city is less
deserving of being named after Christopher Columbus than
Columbus, Ohio. You may have heard (in the song "New York
New York) that New York is The city that never
sleeps. Columbus, on the other hand, is The city that
doesnt fall asleep for quite a while and keeps looking at
the alarm clock and finally kind of dozes off for about an hour
and then the next door neighbor makes a lot noise stumbling in
around 2:30 in the morning and Columbus never really gets back to
sleep until 45 minutes before the alarm goes off.
Thats what it says on the city seal. Fact.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

In a smack down between Columbus and Leif
Erickson, wouldnt Leif win?

(signed)

Proud to be of Italian Descent but under no
illusions about who was tougher, Columbus or Leif Erickson

DEAR PROUD:

Leif Erickson was a Viking so the odds would
certainly favor him. Any intelligent odds maker will tell you
that when a good BIG man faces off against a good SMALL man, bet
on the big guy. You are to be commended on not allowing your
ethnic heritage to interfere with your common sense.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

What about a smack down between Columbus and
Duane "The Rock" Johnson?

(signed)

Proud to be of Italian Descent but under no
illusions about who is tougher, Columbus or Duane "The
Rock" Johnson

DEAR PROUD:

Lets take it as a given that anybody who
outweighs Columbus by more than 30 poundsespecially when
its 30 pounds of muscle (and in the case of the Rock
its probably more like 70 pounds of muscle) is going to
handle Columbus pretty easily in a fair fight. And I believe
Columbus WOULD fight fair, despite what the people who want to
turn Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples
Day would have you believe.

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

Did Columbus have any piercings? I would like
to get my nostril pierced but my parents say no. But if Columbus
had his nostril pierced I think it would go a long way towards
convincing them it wasnt so bad.

(signed)

Michelle

DEAR MICHELLE:

Its possible Columbus had a pierced ear,
since sailors often wore earrings back in the day,
although Ive never seen anything to suggest that he did. It
is very unlikely that he had a pierced anything-else, including a
nostril.

*

COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY LATE BREAKING
BULLETIN: The Columbus Day Expert Guy was kidding about
"Bernard Schwartz" being Columbus real name. It
was actually Tony Curtis real name. No more phone calls or
emails about this, please!

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

Last week there was a married couple on Dr.
Phil, and the wife was upset because the husband only showered
once or twice a week and only brushed his teeth when he wanted to
have sex and never picked up after himself and he said it was
because he worked really hard supporting the family and he
thought SHE should have to pick up. But what does that have to do
with him not brushing his teeth? I am asking you because Dr. Phil
kind of took his eye off the ball on that one if you ask me by
concentrating totally on the fair share of the
housework aspect and mostly ignored the hygiene issues.

(signed)

Not happy with Dr. Phil this time out

DEAR NOT:

Im with you 100%. The fact is the guy was
a lazy slob and you zeroed right in on the proof: when a guy
doesnt brush his own teeth it has nothing to do with even
the most Neanderthal concept of The Womans Place. But I
guess it would be tough to fill up an entire hour show by saying
Youre a slob. Brush your teeth. Although that
would have pretty much nailed it.

*

DEAR COLUMBUS DAY EXPERT GUY:

Why dont we combine Columbus Day and
Halloween into one super nutty coo-coo holiday? You could keep
the spirit of both holidays intact by having everybody go trick
or treating dressed as Columbus. The other thing on my mind,
Columbus wise: You know the joke Q: What is the biggest
pencil in the world? A: Pennsylvania? Well, there is one
about Columbus tooQ: What is the biggest bus in the world?
A: Columbus. But I would think Columbus would actually be smaller
than even a mini-bus. Your thoughts, please.

(signed)

Lets have Columboween.

DEAR LETS:

Thanks for writing

FAREWELL
TO THE MASTER

Several years ago I received a video tape
urging the re-election of Representative Dick Zimmer. I did one
of those o brave new world columns at the time,
noting that while the tape was pretty spiffy as such things go,
if he was really serious about getting my vote, hed send me
a copy of "Super Vixens."

Well, that was a few election cycles back, the
VHS tape has joined the vinyl LP in the Museum of Quaint
Technology, and Mr. Zimmer no longer represents my congressional
district. From this last fact you might
infercorrectlythat my advice was not taken. If it had
beenif the Delaware Valley had been flooded with cassettes
of "Super Vixens"Dick Zimmer would probably be
occupying the White House today.

I found myself thinking of this turning point
in American political history because of this years Ghoul
Pool. The Ghoul Pool is a venerable American tradition in some of
the rarefied circles in which I travel. At the start of the year,
everybody in the Pool selects ten candidates who, in the opinion
of the pooler, will (a) shuffle off this mortal coil before
years end and (b) make the wire services in the course of
so shuffling. There are 11 folks in this years pool, so
each *ahem* candidate who is translated to a Higher Plane is
worth 11 points. If two people have bet on the same horse, said
horse is worth 5.5 points to each person, and so on.

I was the only person in the Ghoul Pool who
guessed correctly that Russ Meyer, the man who created
"Super Vixens," would cash out in 2004. It happened a
couple of weeks ago. Russ netted me the full 11 points and moved
me into 4th placejust one more thing among many
for which Im grateful to Russ. Some of the others are the
aforementioned "Super Vixens," "Beyond the Valley
of the Dolls," and "Faster Pussycat Kill Kill."

"Faster Pussycat Kill Kill" alone
would justify Russ Meyers claim to the title of Greatest
Filmmaker of the 20th Century. The Academy Award for
the Best Picture of 1966 went to "A Man for All
Seasons" (???), but anyone whos seen even the first
ten minutes of "Faster Pussycat Kill Kill" knows there
must have been a miscount at the offices of Price-Waterhouse.
"Faster Pussycat" is not merely the best picture of
1966; it is without a doubt the best film ever made about
homicidal drag-racing go-go dancers.

And yet, Meyer was just hitting his stride when
he made "Faster Pussycat." The next ten years saw the
premieres of "Vixen," "Cherry Harry and
Raquel," "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," and
"Super Vixens." Honest men may differ about which of
these is Russ Meyers masterpiece. I would cast my vote for
"Super Vixens," but I must say a word about the
oft overlooked "Cherry Harry and Raquel."

"Cherry Harry and Raquel"
doesnt play like any other movie ever made. This is because
the laboratory accidentally ruined somewhere between 20 and 30
minutes of the negative. Since the whole thing was supposed to
clock in at around 80 minutes, this is a pretty substantial hunk
of missing narrative. A lesser man might have thrown in the
sponge at this point, or at least tried to reshoot the thing.
Meyer took the film hed salvaged, and to bridge the
continuity gaps, added footage of (for instance) a naked woman
operating a telephone switchboard sitting on the railroad tracks,
people running around in the desert with tubas on their heads,
and so on. On first viewing, you spend a lot of time saying,
"Did I just see what I think I just saw?" If you
thought you just saw someone running around in the desert with a
tuba on her head, the answer is "yes." But by the time
your brain has processed this information, the narrative has been
interrupted by another demented visual non-sequitor. This is
probably the way that people with severe head trauma see the
whole world, except for the part about the tuba.

I would be hard pressed to think of a movie
that has less in common with "Cherry Harry and Raquel"
than Mel Gibsons "The Passion," but they share
one extremely rare distinction: their directors put up their own
money to get them made.

Thus, had Meter abandoned "Cherry Harry
and Raquel," hed have lost his entire investment. In
fact, Meyer financed all but three of his movies (he was also
generally the editor, cinematographer, and writer) and routinely
made personal appearances at the movie houses which showed his
wares, and mixed with his fans.

Thats how I was able to meet Russ Meyer
in person, when he was barnstorming New Jersey in support of his
film "Up." I have to admit it wasnt one of his
best; after "Super Vixens" the decline in quality is
pretty steep. But Russ himself turned out to be a delightful
raconteur, who answered all of our questions (Q: Is the Harry in
"Cherry Harry and Raquel" the same Harry in "Super
Vixens?" They are both played by Charles Napier, but
hes a good guy in "Cherry" and the villain in
"Super Vixens." A: No, but I think he wears the same hat)
and happily posed for pictures with us. We (12 or 15 of my
closest friends and I) saw him in Paramus for an early afternoon
matinee and then drove to Morristown to catch him at an after
dinner show there. To our shock and delight, he recognized us.
"Wow," he said, "You guys really ARE my biggest
fans!" And we were, too.

Now Russ has passed on at the too-young age of
82. He will be missed. But I have to admit that those 11 points
have softened the blow quite a bit.

THE ROAST BEEF SANDWICH
USHER

The Park Theater was a slightly seedy
second-run movie house when my friend Chuck got a job there as
the assistant manager. Chuck had big plans for the place. A
second-run house showed recent movies you might have missed and
generally charged considerably less than the first-run
theaters the ecological niche currently filled by places
like Blockbuster. Chuck wanted to turn the Park into a repertoire
house, changing the bills a couple of times a week, showing all
kinds of movies, even real old onesthe function currently
performed by channels like Turner Classics. The Park had been
limping along, sometimes breaking even, sometimes not, for at
least 15 years, and Chuck didnt have to work hard to
convince the owner to give his idea a shot.

Chuck also wanted to staff the place with
people who "shared his vision," which is a euphemism
for "hire his friends." He wasnt cold-blooded
enough to simply fire all the townies who worked there as ushers,
candy girls, and cashiers, and the owner probably would have
balked if hed tried to. It wasnt necessary; the Park
paid minimum wage and the turnover was considerable, so Chuck was
able to replace everybody there, one at a time, with his buddies,
like a virus taking over a healthy organism. Within six months
all the ushers were old friends of Chucks.

Except Tommy, who was there when Chuck was
hired and had apparently decided upon ushering as a career. In
the normal course of things, when another friend of Chucks
needed a job, Chuck would have cut Tommys hours back to the
point where Tommy would have quit, but that didnt happen
because Tommy made himself indispensable to the smooth running of
the Park Theater. He became the Roast Beef Sandwich Usher. That
is, he was the guy Chuck sent out to the roast beef sandwich
place across town to bring back his (Chucks) roast beef
sandwich.

The rest of us refused to become the Roast Beef
Sandwich Usher. This was not (just) laziness. We didnt
object to lousy jobs, like mopping up the vomit in the balcony.
We didnt like it, but we all recognized that it had to be
done. And of course when youre doing a really miserable
job, you get to brag about it, the way that my friend
Victors brother used to brag about his draft number being
4. People would give a low whistle and sometimes buy him a drink,
where if he had been 37 or something, nobody would have been
impressed (although he still would have ended up in the Army).
Similarly, I dined out for years on my story about unclogging the
ladies room toilet when somebody crammed a stuffed elephant
down there during a matinee of "Pippi Longstocking."

But even though we were willing to mop up vomit
and uncram elephants, we all drew the line at delivering
Chucks roast beef sandwich. It would have altered the
relationship in some unhealthy way and Chuck (who never grasped
this) only made it worse by telling us we could "keep the
change."

So Tommy ended up keeping the change. His whole
function was getting Chucks roast beef sandwiches.

You might get the impression from this that
Tommy lounged around reading the Racing Form between roast beef
runs while the rest of us slaved away, working ceaselessly to
keep the Park Theater running smoothly, like the sailors in
"Master and Commander"polishing the brass,
stitching up the mainsail, trepanning the odd skull and so forth.
In fact, unless someone had just thrown up, we didnt really
do much of anything, except watch the movies when they were
interesting and hit on the candy girls when they werent.
Thats what Tommy did, too, in addition to his roastbeefing.

One evening a neatly printed cardboard sign
appeared on the candy counter:

Last Sandwich Run 7:40

Please Place Your Orders by 7:30

Sign Up Sheet by the Milkduds

There in fact was a sign up sheet by the
Milkduds, as well as a menu from the sandwich shop taped to the
popcorn machine. The candy girls made change for people who
ordered from the menu, and at 7:35 the cashier called the order
in. Tommy made sure that "his" customers all had aisle
seats (or close to it) and marked them (the seats, not the
customers) with small peelable glow-in-the-dark stickers
little blobs of color that said "groovy" or
"flower power" or some related inanity, with which the
candy girls decorated their text book covers. Tommy never had
more than four customers (not counting Chuck) and never collected
more than $1.50 in tipsnot a whale of a lot, but I suppose
that was inevitable since everyone had paid up front (and most
people had eaten dinner less than an hour earlier). But it was
$1.50 more than the rest of us made.

This went onwith Chucks approval,
since he felt it kept Tommy from asking for a raisefor
about six weeks, and then the sandwich shop, recognizing a
go-getter when they saw one, hired Tommy away. "This makes
no sense," said Chuck. "Why would the sandwich place
hire Tommy? They got the roast beef sandwiches RIGHT THERE."
Nobody stepped in to fill the void Tommy left. The menu from the
sandwich shop remained taped to the side of the popcorn machine
for a couple of weeks before someone finally took it down. Chuck
started to brown bag it. The golden age of roast beef sandwiches
was over.

Crazy
Crazy River

I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, but
every eight years or so a propane tank comes hurtling down the
Delaware towards us and the joint starts jumping. Im not
sure if its the same propane tank every time or not, but if
it is, I think maybe its time for whoever owns it to start
thinking about getting an oil burner or even just buying some
extra blankets this winter.

I got the heads up on the
water-rising-and-propane-tank-on-the-way thing pretty early this
go round, which gave me time to secure my belongings and move
them to safety. I didnt actually secure my belongings and
move them to safety, but I did have the time.

As the Delaware rose, I wandered over to the
nearby creekI believe on maps its called the
hoojafoojakanetskapoojamiskatowakkajawakkittalonganetcong, for
shortand noticed that there was a considerable backwash
from the river. The ducks were not at all put out by this. They
didnt have to chase bread crumbs down stream as usual, they
just had to bob around and wait for the backwash to send the
bread crumbs upstream. Well, if the ducks are happy, Im
happy.

I made an educated guess that the Delaware was
not going to rise enough to flood my living room (my educated
guesses, I should mention, are based on absolutely no data
whatsoever and tend to favor my burning the fewest number of
calories possible in any given situation) and went about my daily
business. Then about 1 AM I saw one of my neighbors driving out
of town at an unduly high speed, with what appeared to be all of
his earthly belongings wrapped in a tarp and tied to the roof of
his car. Later I discovered that what I had taken for all of his
earthly belongings was a "Chuck E. Cheese" sign he had
borrowed from said venue as part of a fraternity
initiation and that his speed was a function of police pursuit,
but at the time I had no way of knowing this and reassessed my
strategy for dealing with the rising R. and the hurtling tank of
P.

I took an inventory of my apartment contents,
with special attention to stuff on the floor, since in the event
of actual flooding things on the floor were more likely to get
wet than things not on the floor. I then concluded that nothing
more than two inches or so off the floor was going to get wet
(this was one of those educated guesses referred to earlier). So
now it was a matter of dividing that stuff into three categories:
(1) Stuff currently on the floor that would not get ruined if
covered with water and therefore didnt have to be moved,
such as underwear and dumbbells. (2) Stuff currently on the floor
that would get ruined if covered with water and had to be moved,
such as guitars and food. (3) Stuff currently on the floor that
would get ruined if covered with water but didnt have to be
moved, such as everything else. Once I had mentally consigned
everything on the floor into one or another of these categories,
I realized I only had to concern myself with category (2) items.
These were going to go on the couch for the duration of the
emergency. Also, as a precaution, I turned all my broom upside
down so that the part with the bristles was in the air and
wouldnt get soaked. A lot of people are probably surprised
to learn that I own a broom, but I do. I am, as has often been
said, a man of hidden depths.

I half-expected to run out of room on the
couch, but it turned out that a lot of the food I had assumed to
be category (2) was pretty much category (3). In fact all of it
was aside from some Doritos and they had definitely seen better
days, too. In the end I didnt actually move anything onto
the couch, aside from a cushion and the guitar. I actually took a
pair of jeans out of my drawer and put them ON the floor, since
they were a little too big and needed to shrink a bit and getting
flooded would require a wash n dry that might do the
trick.

Then I went off to work and didnt give
much thought to the approaching deluge-with-propane-tank until my
lunch break, when I realized my collection of Metamorpho
the Element Man comic books was under my bed in a cardboard
box and that the cardboard box would probably not afford much
deluge protection. It wouldnt hurt, I reckoned, to put that
box on the couch before it was too late.

There were a variety of cops and people in
reflective vests in the vicinity of my apartment, watching the
river cresting. "Whats up, chief?" said one of
the people with the reflective vests.

"Gotta get my Element Mans out
from under the bed," I explained.

"Your Elephant Man?"

"Element Man," I said. "And
theres six of them [There are in fact a total of seven, but
Im missing issue 4] so its Element
Mans."

"No, its Element Men," he said.
"The plural of man is men."

"Not if its a title," I said.

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Well, would you say The Grapes of
Wrath ARE my favorite book?

"No," he said.

"All right then."

"My favorite book is Guadalcanal
Diary by Richard Trakakris. It was a hell of a movie,
too."

At that point I decided I didnt care if
my Metamorpho comics got wet after all and I went back to work.
While I was at work the propane tank passed by but missed the
bridge and the river crested well short of my living room. When I
got home I almost picked the jeans off the floor and put them
back in the dresser, but according to the Weather Channel
theres another tropical storm brewing out there somewhere,
so I left them right there just in case this time the place
actually gets flooded. They dont look completely
ridiculousdespite what SOME people thinkbut they are
a tad too roomy in the seat and another trip through the drier
wouldnt hurt a bit.

SPIDER

I was rummaging through my garage the other
day, looking for something nasty to use on the ragweed in the
pumpkin patch. As I bent down, the bill of my cap intersected the
thread of a descending spider, who stopped descending and hung
from the bill of my cap, thinking things over.

I continued rummaging, found some brownish gunk
guaranteed to make the demise of the ragweed long and painful,
and set to work.

Later, as I waited for the weeds to start
screaming, I noticed that the spider and I were eye to eye. Or
rather eye to eyes, since the spiders got eight of
em. Soon we came to an understanding and went into
partnership. We decided to collaborate on a web.

The secret of any successful collaboration is
that one of the collaborators does all the work. In this case, it
happened to be the spider. Its not that Im lazy. Or
anyway, its not just that Im lazy. The spider can
spin webs out of its abdomen and I can not, much as I would like
to. My contribution consisted of providing interesting things for
the spider to weave the web around.

If your first reaction to all this is
"Ick!" and your second reaction is to wonder aloud who
my shrink might be, Im afraid you are the victim of
Hollywoods vicious anti-spider smear campaign.

Youve seen too many bad giant spider
moviesbad in that the movies stink, and bad in the sense
that the giant spider is rarely, if ever, the hero.

You know the way it goes. Some spider grows to
1000 times its normal size and runs amuck, and then we kill it.
No one involved in making these movies (or in watching them)
(except me) ever entertains the theory that the giant spider is
running amuck not because its a spider but because
its a giant. What would you do if you were suddenly 1000
times your normal size? Head down to the neighborhood bar and
shoot a few racks of pool? I dont think so. Youd run
amuck. So lets not have any double standards for giant
spiders.

Before you start flooding the newspaper office
with angry letters, YES, the spider in "Charlottes
Web" is sympathetically drawn, and YES, the Spiderman movies
are a step in the right direction. But Charlotte the Spider and
Toby McGuire are not, when you come right down to it, really very
spider-ish. Neither one has enough eyes, for one thing. And Toby
not only never bites the heads off flies or anything, but he was
firing his viscous webbing from his wrists, not his abdomen.
Where was he storing all that stuff? He should have had forearms
like Popeye. I realize they needed the PG rating, but come on.

I first became a fan of spiders many years ago
when one took up residence under my bathroom sink and
singehandedly (or eightlegged-ly) eliminated my cockroach
problem. Since then, Ive always thought it a good idea to
have a spider or two on the premises, not only for insect
control, but for purely esthetic reasons. A first-rate spider web
is beautiful.

One day I turned a milk carton on its side, put
some junk inside, and added a spider. The spider built her web
between two pieces of junk I had selected. I felt like I had made
a major contribution to the final product.

I used more care in selecting the objects for
my next box. At first my arrangements were heavily influenced by
the remarkably assembled glass-fronted boxes done by Joseph
Cornell (who never worked with spidersanother great artist
ruined by Hollywood). My best web (done in tandem with a feisty
little brown spider) was in a box containing only an empty tomato
juice can, a three sided metric ruler, and a scattering of
childrens building blocks. The spider was so inspired she
came close to describing a double helix with her web.

With OUR web.

So, the new spider and I are set up now. Every
so often, if I notice a cloud of flies in the vicinity, I
casually stroll over and remark, " I understand theres
some swell decaying food in that milk carton under the back
steps."

Theres a very promising web under
construction between an old paintbrush I forgot to clean a few
weeks ago and a beer bottle I found near the railroad tracks. (So
far, the burned out light bulb has been relatively unwebbed).

And, in a few weeks, Ill preserve the
whole assemblage for posterity with a light spray of shellac.

My new partner will be preserved for posterity
as well, but like I told him when we were setting up the
partnership, no sacrifice is too great for our art.

OYSTERS

It was the morning of the big Labor Day
block party (to be held, as always, in the DeYoungs yard,
since it had an inground pool) and my dad led me and Picarillo
and Calvano into the basement, where a big cardboard box sat
beside the oil burner. The box was full of empty plastic
dishwashing liquid bottles, 25 or 30 of them. "These bottles
have already been rinsed out," said my father, "but you
boys rinse them out again. Keep rinsing them until there are no
bubbles. Then when youre absolutely sure theres not a
molecule of soap left, fill them up with water and take a sip. If
you taste any soap, rinse them again. So far so clear?"

We nodded.

"Then dry them." He tossed a roll of
paper towels to Picarillo. "Inside and out. Holler when
youre done." He vanished up the steps and we set to
work.

My mother had been saving plastic bottles for a
long timenot just dishwashing liquid bottles, but bleach,
detergent, chocolate sauce. She started doing this when my sister
was in Brownies, and the troop cut up bleach bottles to make
flour scoops. It was a crafts project. My mother continued saving
plastic bottles just in case another crafts project requiring
plastic bottles happened to come along. So far it had not. My
sister was now 17 and we owned the largest collection of plastic
bottles in the world.

During this years Fourth of July block
party, however, someone knocked a bottle of gin off the picnic
table, the clean-up had been a tad inefficient, and by the end of
the festivities 17 pieces of glass had been removed from 13
different feet.

There had been some talk about banning liquor
from the Labor Day bash, but one day as my mother was tossing
another empty bottle of Ivory Liquid into the box, a synapse
fired and a glowing 60 watt bulb popped into view above her head.
Not only would plastic bottles not break if they fell off the
picnic tables, but since they had squirt tops, they
wouldnt even spill!

So here we were, re-rinsing the bottles in
preparation for filling them with gin, vodka, and Tom Collins
mix. The three of us would not be allowed to do the actual
filling, but we did get to write the names of the various spirits
and mixers on the bottles with Magic Markers. We mostly used
squiggly "monster" letters patterned after the logo of
"Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine, but there were
also dripping blood-style letters and even flaming letters
inspired by the spiffy graphics of "CarTOONS" and
"Hot Rodders," two excellent periodicals Calvanos
brother Duff subscribed to.

The plastic liquor bottles were an instant
success. "Very nicely done," said my Uncle Tug,
cradling bottles of gin (in blood letters) and vermouth (robot
letters, studded with excellently rendered nuts and bolts).
"Too bad your pop didnt purchase gin worthy of these
superb bottles. Ah well." We tagged along as he retreated to
a table under the decaying elm tree near the corner of the
DeYoungs yard. He ignored the hot dogs and hamburgers
charring on the grill; he had brought a picnic hamper of his own.
"Boys," he said. "Labor Day happens to take place
in the month of September. And September contains the letter
r. Therefore..."

He reached into the hamper and brought out what
for a second we thought was a seashell. But there was some...
glop or something on it...

"Theres something wrong with your
shell," said Picarillo.

"Yeah? Nothing a little lemon wont
fix," said Uncle Tug. He deftly coaxed a few drops from a
lemon wedge, brought the shell to his lips, and tipped the
contents into his mouth. Picarillo screamed. In fact, we all
screamed. Uncle Tug chewed a couple of times and swallowed.
"Blue point," he said, dabbing his lips with a napkin.
"Never had one? I know your mother swears by the Olympia,
but I never cared for em, myself. Blue points got a
real tang to it. Let it rest on your tongue a minute and
theres a sort of cucumber undertaste to it." He held
out a half shell towards Picarillo, who was changing from one
unhealthy color to another at remarkable speed.

"Whats all the yelling about?"
said my mother. "Oohoysters!"

"Just blue points, Annie," said Uncle
Tug.

"Well, theres nothing wrong with
that," she said. My father and several other adults had now
wandered over to Tugs table, and Tug graciously shared the
contents of his hamper.

Watching my parents suck down one oyster after
another was horrifying and utterly disorientingthey might
as well have been eating kittens, or aluminum siding.

"Candy corns," said Tug. We were
thunderstruck. How could anyone thing CANDY CORNS were
disgusting?

The adults were now sated, and drifted away.

"Theyll never make me eat
oysters," said Picarillo.

"Well," said Calvano, "what
about if you got a job as a geek?" Million Dollar Movie had
been showing Tyrone Power in "Nightmare Alley" recently
and wed done a lot of thinking and talking about being
geeks. It seemed a likely career path for Picarillo, in fact.
"Then youd HAVE to eat oysters, if somebody gave you a
bucks and said eat this oyster."

"I wouldnt do it."

"Youd have to or theyd FIRE
you!"

"Well..."

"I could do it," said Calvano.
"You gotta be PROFESSIONAL, Picarillo!"

So we decided to have an oyster-eating contest
right then and there. "I say I can eat TWICE as many oysters
as you can, Picarillo," said Calvano.

"Go ahead," said Picarillo.

"You go first, and Ill eat twice as
many."

"Im gonna eat EIGHT. Theres no
way youre eating 16."

"You arent eating eight."

The argument continued. Finally Picarillo
agreed to waive the double requirement; whoever ate
the most oysters, wins. When 11 minutes had passed and no one
made a move towards the hamper, we decided that whoever ate ANY
oyster would be the winner. More time passed.

"Whoever puts an oyster in his
mouth," I suggested.

"Okay," said Calvano.

"Fine," said Picarillo.

20 minutes went by, and the Oyster Eating
contest did not have a winner.

It still doesnt.

ASK
THE PEROGIE EXPERT GUY

Big doings here at Perogie
Expert Guy Headquarters (AKA "cubicle D")! Not only has
the management FINALLY gotten around to fixing the corner of that
linoleum tile which kept curling up and tripping your
correspondent at inopportune moments, but the grungy old waste
basket has been replaced by a tres eleganté little number with
an art deco motif! Woof! Woof!

Unfortunately, we still have
not quite ironed out the little email contretemps with the
Olympics Expert Guy who has been a tad miffed ever since I
changed my email address to OEG@expertguy.com (O for onion, E for
egg, and G for goat cheese, the Perogie Expert Guys THREE
FAVORITE PEROGIE INGREDIENTS!!) I have been getting some of the
Olympics Expert Guys mail (his address is
OEGuy@expertguy.com) (VERY imaginative! NOT!) and although he
CLAIMS he has not been getting ANY of mine, which is ridiculous,
since I have not received a single perogie-related letter since
the changeover. "You werent getting any before
either," huffs Mr. Olympics Expert Guy. Me-ow! I think I
know whos favored in the 5000 meter SULK! Anyway, until he
starts fessing up and delivering my perogie mail, I am just
going to answer the Olympics questions which have landed in my
inbox. So THERE!

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

I guess international
crime-fighting organizations such as Interpol have no fashion
police. Some of the colors of the uniforms of the participants
didn't even match nor correspond to the colors on their flag. Why
do so many countries parade around in the opening ceremonies in
such ugly uniforms?

(signed)

Appalled and confused, both.

DEAR APPALLED:

EXCELLENT question. Which reminds
me, a few weeks back I said that the "samosa" was the
Indian subcontinents answer to the perogie. While the
stuffing is (or can be) similar to that of the perogie, the
perogie is an al dente PASTA pocket. The samosa is more of like a
turnover. Sorry about that!

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

Is the earth growing? It was
reported that there were more countries competing than ever
beforewhere did they come from?

(signed)

No idea where they could be coming
from

DEAR NO:

Some of them are former Soviet
Republics, some of are newly formed African states, but ALL of
them have a perogie or perogie-like item in the national cuisine.
"Even countries from the Far East, Perogie Expert Guy?"
Yes indeedwhat, after all, is a WON TON if not a Chinese
perogie? ("Is the earth growing?" indeed!! LOVE it!)

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

Why aren't the Greek people
filling the venues of many of the events? There are a lot of
empty seats. And if I may, a follow-up question. Why do they use
the word venue and not just call it what it isa
pool, a stadium, an arena etc.?

(signed)

Dave Pratt

DEAR DAVE:

One must assume that various
Greeks have various reasons for skipping the games this year and
leave it at that. As to your follow-up: YOU tell them, Dave!
Lets get these Olympic whoever-they-ares to start calling a
pool a pool (and a perogie a perogie!!) "Venue" indeed!

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

There are hundreds of products
that are the "official" products of the Olympics.
Everything from mattresses to credit cards to certain car
manufacturers is an "official" product. How can I get
one of my products named "official"?

(signed)

Because I have many many products
believe you me

DEAR BECAUSE:

Is this a trick question?
Obviously, you outbid your competition, and/or bribe someone in a
position of authority. DUH, as the REAL Olympic Expert Guy would
(and does!) say. Perogie Trivia Tidbit: I did a quick Internet
search and discovered there was NO Official Perogie of the 2004
Olympic Games. I dont know if this is because the perogie
is just not considered a summer food or what. Anyway,
clever readers will be able to tell from my email address what
ingredients I think should be in the Official Perogie of the 2006
games!

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

The announcers on television do a
very good job of pronouncing names of people from different
countries that spell their names without vowels. Examples are the
Slovakian gymnast Dffrntslchmtvz Kzykwlsky, or the Chinese
volleyball player Xn Ng. Where do these announcers learn this
craft - can I learn too?

(signed)

Envious of their incredible
ability to pronounce names without vowels

DEAR ENVIOUS:

And just what makes you think
those names are being pronounced correctly? How would you know?
For that matter, who knows if they are even spelled correctly?
"Perogie" has a dozen or more correct
spellings, depending upon whether the perogie in question hails
from the Ukraine, from Poland, from Prussia (Eastern Germany) or
wherever. Who cares about the spelling? Its the INGREDIENTS
that matterthe potatoes, the real aged cheddar cheese,
onions, roasted garlic, bacon, sauerkraut, mushrooms, spinach,
seasoned ground beef or fresh jalepeño peppers. And it goes
without saying that the same principle applies to... whatever it
was we were talking about.

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

Ancient Olympians never wore
clothes when they competed in the Olympics. I noticed that some
of the athletes are wearing very little in the way of athletic
uniforms. An example of this is beach volleyball. Are Olympians
slowly reverting back to competing in the nude?

(signed)

Not really interested, just
wondering in a purely academic sense.

DEAR NOT:

Such a turn of events would
undoubtedly please the gentleman who wrote earlier about the ugly
uniforms on display in the Opening Ceremonies. I have no real
opinion on the subject, other than to reiterate what I said about
samosas.

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

I get dizzy on a slow moving
teacup ride at the local carnivals. In certain track events they
run many many laps in the same directiondont they get
dizzy going so fast going in circles?

(Signed)

Dizzy

DEAR DIZZY:

Probably not, if the circle is
large enough. This may be a good place to remind everyone that
while the perogie and the perogie-like food item are appropriate
in most circumstances, you want to avoid them (particularly the
cheese-filled varieties) just prior to vigorous athletic
exercise, most definitely including those involving racing around
circular tracks at high speed!

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

When I stay in the pool for more
than a few minutes my fingers become "prune looking"
most Olympic swimmers spend hours training in the pool, wouldn't
their whole bodies look like one big wrinkled prune?

(Signed)

Prune Fingers

DEAR PRUNE:

And just who says they DONT
look like one big wrinkled prune? Remember, we the viewing public
are not privileged to watch these athletes during all those hours
of training, just during the SECONDS of competition, which
doesnt permit much pruning. (Quotes around the
pruning because without the quotes it would mean
lopping off limbs, and they dont do THAT in the
Olympics!) (At least not yet!!)

DEAR OLYMPIC EXPERT GUY:

There has been a lot of media
about Olympic athletes using "performance enhancing"
drugs. Wouldn't most employers want to give them to their
employees to get better performance at their jobs?

(Signed)

Efficiency Expert

DEAR EFFICIENCY:

We are most definitely not going
to show THIS letter to the Chief Executive Expert Guy! Or wait a
minutemaybe we should show it to him. Say, Olympic Expert
Guyso you suppose that are "performance
enhancing" drugs that might make SOME PEOPLE less annoying?
(Just KIDDING!!) (NOT!!)

JOURNEY INTO
MADNESS!!

I have (ahem!) a new book out, and
you can read all about it elsewhere in this weeks paper. In
fact, go ahead and do that, and let me know whether or not they
used the picture of me where Im standing on my head.
Ill be right here.

Finished? What Id like to
discuss now are the illustrations for the book and how they got
there. Paul Proch did the drawings. Paul Proch (rhymes with
"roach") is probably the least-known famous artist in
the world. Hesbeen in a number
of art gallery group shows, including one in Eeklo, Belgium. He
had two animated films shown on "The Uncle Floyd Show."
He illustrated my two most recent books, including
"Cthulhus Back in Town," which to date has sold
almost 9 copies. The "Cthulhu" drawings comprised
Pauls most celebrated work until this year, when Paul
designed and drew the sketchbook for the movie "Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." All those creepy sketches of
Kate Winslet with bat wings and skeletons that you saw Jim Carrey
laboring over, that was Pauls doing. Paul then parlayed
this Big Time Hollywood Celebrity-Studded Breakthrough into the
plum assignment of drawing all the pictures for my "Custom
Neon Sign Shop" book, for a cool thirty dollars, of which
most has already been paid with the balance ($7) on the way just
as soon as we sell a few.

Just how did Paul manage to fall
so far, so fast? Youd better sit down for this. Its a
sordid tale indeed, filled with sex, murder, and insanity.

THE PAUL PROCH
STORY

I met Paul nearly 30 years ago, at
the NYU Science Fiction Society, where he never spoke and drew a
lot of robots and mutants. His robots always had a sort of
forlorn look about them, like they had been badly repaired with
shoddy parts. I dont even want to think about the mutants.
While at the NYU film school, Paul hooked up with Charlie Kaufman
and in due course they began collaborating on all kinds of
things; Paul shot his senior film at Charlies parents
house with Charlie as his cameraman, and eventually they started
publishing stories and one-offs in the old National Lampoon
(including a Stephen King parody called "Egg Boiler" in
which (cough!) I make a cameo appearance as CIA agent Billy-Jeff
Scrimshaw). They wrote a play called "The Fat Zip"
which was performed in Madison, Wisconsin to (says Paul)
"glowing reviews," and a screenplay called "Purely
Coincidental," which they sent to Alan Arkin to see if he
might be interested in directing it. Arkin sent back "a
really nice letter" (says Paul) telling them it wasnt
a screenplay but "an insane tone poem." He was at least
half-rightI dont know about tone poem, but insane is
putting it mildly. Its been 20 years since I read it, but I
believe that one of the characters is Don Knotts, and
theres another character who looks exactly like Don Knotts,
and theres an execution where the cleric administering last
rites reads, instead of the traditional sacrament, Dr.
Seuss "Green Eggs and Ham." The WHOLE book.

Undaunted, or at least not totally
daunted, they worked on a book for a Minneapolis publisher while
they both worked in a Minneapolis art museum (Paul was a guard)
but abandoned it halfway through because "the publisher was
a nut." Considering the source of this observation (Paul),
the mind reels. They wrote spec scripts for "Married... with
Children," and "Newhart" and a pilot based on
"The Fat Zip," and Paul was the best man at
Charlies wedding, and finally Charlie broke through as a
writer for the sitcoms "Get a Life" and "Ned and
Stacy" and from there to the astounding screenplays for
"Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation," and
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Paul, meanwhile, descended into
insanity and murder, by day a high-ranking government official
and man-about-town, by night a blood-crazed cannibal serial
killer.

Or to put it another way, he did
the illustrations for my books. He did one for "Wing Ding at
Uncle Tugs," for a Calvano and Picarillo story, that
creeped out the publisher and me so much we just couldnt
bring ourselves to use it. Then Charlie asked him to do the
drawings for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,"
and he did. Although Paul and Charlie both adamantly deny that
the Jim Carrey character is based on Paul, Carrey employs so many
obvious Proch-ismsbody language, vocal tics, facial
expressionsthat my ex-wife called after seeing a 30 second
TV commercial for the movie and said, "Did you see the ad
for this new Jim Carrey movie? He looks and sounds exactly like
Paul Proch!"

Anyway, once the film was
completed, Paul returned to his normal routine of murder,
cannibalism, and spot illustrations for my books. The new one
contains among other things, a picture of me drawing a monster
face on a Spaldeen, and regardless of what the police find when
they dig up Pauls basement, I will always be grateful that
he drew me with HAIR. You can see it on page 48 of "The
Custom Neon Sign Shop, now available at the Delaware Valley News
office and perhaps in Eeklo, Belgium as well.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

PRESENT TENSE

At risk of sounding even more obnoxious than
usual, I must admit that I hate buying presents for my relatives.
Birthday shopping for relatives used to be a minor annoyance,
like waiting on line at Motor Vehicles behind some dork who
didnt fill out form A457-h correctly and has now spent 15
minutes fruitlessly trying to convince the clerk not to make him
do it over and get at the end of the line. Then birthday shopping
for relatives became a major annoyance, like BEING the dork who
hasnt correctly filled out form A475-h. You remember your
sister remarked that she loved this cute picture of the cottage
with the light spilling out of the windows when you found
yourselves outside the Thomas Kincaid Painter of Light store at
the mall last October and so you bought a copy and then three
days before her birthday you stopped over at her house and there
it is, up on the living room wall, where, you suddenly realize,
shes been loving it for about 5 years now.

So its back to the end of the line, and
this time you make sure you dont write in the space that
says "Office Use Only." And eventually, if you have to
fill out form A457-h enough times, you see the sense of sticking
to gift certificates.

But the thing is, my sister LOVES unwrapping
presents and carefully folding up the festive wrapping paper and
saving the bows and all that stuff. There is palpable
disappointment when she gets just an envelope with a piece of
paper in it, even if that piece of paper cost upwards of a
hundred bucks. And this IN SPITE of the fact that YOUR birthday
present (by which I mean MY birthday present I dont
know what possessed me to start writing in the second person, but
they dont pay me enough to revise these things, so
youre just going to have to live with it) in spite of
the fact that MY birthday present from my sister is a check,
every year. I get a dollar for every year I manage to survive,
$45 for my 45th, $46 for my 46th and so on.
I would respond in kind, but my sister is six years older than I
am so not only would this result in a net loss of six bucks a
year, but... well, come to think of it, the net loss of six bucks
a year is the only result I can think of. But its enough.

So I go with gift certificates. Sometimes for
restaurants, sometimes for stores. And, in the fall of 2002, for
an hour and a half massage.

"Ive always wanted a massage,"
she said upon opening the envelope, which made me think Id
done the right thing. "I cant wait till the school
year is over so I can do this." My sister is a kindergarten
teacher. If I taught kindergarten I would not wait till the
school year had run its course before I got a massage. I would
probably get an illegal sublet at the massage therapists
office. But thats just me.

Fall became winter, which became spring and
blah blah blah, in due course the summer of 2004 arrived and my
sister had still not taken advantage of her massage certificate.
"Its probably expired," she said. I called the
massage therapist to make sure the certificate hadnt
expired (it had not) and gave my sister the good news.
"Well, thats... thats good. So I can do it. When
can I do it?"

"Well," I said, "You can make an
appointment for any time that..."

"I mean, you have to come with me."

"Um. Why is that?"

"Because Im NERVOUS. Ive never
had one of these and I dont know what to do!" This was
said in a tone of voice that you dont hear much outside of
911calls about chain saw mishaps. I said there really wasnt
much to it, aside from showing up, but Id be happy to drive
her to her appointment if it would make her feel better.

The appointment was made, and so began three
solid weeks of increasingly bizarre phone calls from my
increasingly bizarre sister. "What should I wear?"

"Whatever you like."

"But arent some kinds of clothes
easier to get a massage in than others?"

"Well, see, theyll be on a hanger
during the massage, is how it generally works."

"Do I have to take my clothes off??"

"I believe it does facilitate
things."

"I dont know if I can do
that!!"

"Just close your eyes and think of
England."

"What??"

And so on, until M-Day dawned. I arrived at my
sisters house and I was met at the door by her dog, which
greeted me as only a neurotic, senile, incontinent dachshund can.
"Bad dog," said my sister. "Well clean that
up later. Do I have to take my clothes off?"

"Its up to you. I usually just wear
rubber gloves when Im dealing with this sort of
thing."

"I mean for the massage!"

"You can wear as much or as little as you
like," I said.

"Well, I am a very private person."
This is the first time Id ever heard anyone say this in
real life so I blinked several times. Usually only celebrities
ever say theyre very private people, usually to a film crew
from Entertainment Tonight, usually while speculating about how
their Honeymoon Video got on the Internet. But I digress.

The trip to the massage took about 25 minutes,
during which time I was asked at least four more times about the
dress code. I left her in the capable hands of the massage
therapist and left to kill the next 90 minutes at a local
bookstore.

Where, about half an hour later, my cell phone
rang.

"Im in the bathroom down the hall
from the massage office," said my sister. "I cant
get the door open."

"Uh-huh. Well, how long have you been in
there? What? You had to interrupt your massage after 15 minutes
to go to the bathroom? You must have a bladder the size of a
walnut."

"Im a little nervous, thats
all."

"Look, Im sure shell come to
check on you soon. How are you enjoying the massage so far?"

"Its wonderful."

"Did she lend you a robe to go to the
ladies room or what? How is it you have your cell phone with
you?"

"I got dressed! I hate leaving my
purse..."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. You want me to give you
the massage therapists number so you can call her?"

"No! I dont know what to say! Can
YOU call her?"

"Certainly," I sighed.

"You wont tell anybody about this,
will you?"

"Not a soul," I said.

4TH
ANNUAL LETTER WRITING CONTEST AUGUST UPDATE

I have been flooded with calls and emails from my readers, all
wondering, "just how is the 4th Annual Emma Grimshaw
Letter-Writing Contest proceeding?" [By "flooded,"
of course, I mean "the column I was writing about the kid
getting bit by the monkey wasnt working out."] So I
phoned the Contest Coordinator to find out.

ME: Hows the letter writing contest going?

EMMA: I thought you were writing your column about that monkey
that bit the little boy in New York.

ME: Its coming along fine, Im just taking a short
break.

EMMA: Not gelling, huh?

ME: No, not at all. So whats up with the letter writing
contest?

EMMA: Well. Theres been a surprise entrant.

ME: Yeah?

EMMA: But enough about that. Lets talk about monkeys.
Lets talk about YOUR monkey, and then about monkeys in
general, because I have a lot to say on the subject. You know
that seeing-eye monkey in New York that attacked that kid?

ME: As a matter of fact...

EMMA: Well, I PREDICTED that.

ME: Huh?

EMMA: Seriously. I realized a year and a half ago that all
monkeys are inherently evil, so essentially I predicted it.

ME: I dont recall this particular prediction...

EMMA: ExCUSE me. I received a SEVERE ALLERGIC SKIN REACTION to
a rally monkey. Its the Anaheim Rally Monkey. Maybe it
doesnt have a name. But it probably does. Like the Taco
Bell Chihuahua. Everybody just calls it "The Taco Bell
Chihuahua." But its real name is... uh... Giggli?

ME: Isnt that the Ben Affleck movie that nobody saw?

EMMA: ONE of them. No, wait, its "Gidget." The
Chihuahuas name is Gidget. Same deal with the rally monkey.
I mean it has a name, not that the name is Gidget.

ME: My readers will want to know: what is a rally monkey?

EMMA: In 2002, during the Anaheim Angels championship run, I
was watching a game where they were losing in the 7th inning, and
they brought out this trained monkey that had a sign that said,
"Believe in the Power of the Rally Monkey." And they
won. After that, they kept on bringing out the rally monkey. One
moment while I check on my popcorn chicken in the microwave. [27
minute pause, during which the interviewer hears the TV being
turned on, and an apparently uproarious episode of Leave It
To Beaver airs.]

EMMA: Hello? Is there somebody on this phone?

ME: Hello?

EMMA: Hello? Oh.

ME: I have some more questions about the rally monkey.

EMMA: The what?

ME: THE RALLY MONKEY. In Anaheim. Did you happen to be at the
game?

EMMA: No. I saw a picture in the NY Post.

ME: Well, did you ever attend a game where the rally monkey
was present?

EMMA: Hel-LO! Do I live in Anaheim?

ME: So how did you manage to get a skin reaction?

EMMA: I bought a t-shirt at RallyMonkey.com and I got a skin
rash. I went to the NYU Medical Center, and when I got there they
punched in my name on the computer and said, were you here
in August, 1984? And I said, I was BORN here in August
1984! Anyway it turns out Im ALLERGIC to rally
monkeys. And Pepto Bismol. Also Italian deodorant, but dont
say that. I dont want to talk about that. Wait, "Leave
It to Beaver" is coming back on. You know whos HOT?

ME: Um.

EMMA: Wally. Did you hear what I said?

ME: I... did you say, Wally?

EMMA: Yes. Beavers older brother. Is he STILL hot?
Sometimes they dont stay hot. Marlon Brando started out
really hot but then he got extremely UN hot.

ME: I believe that time has taken its toll on Wally, though
not to the extent that it did on Marlon.

EMMA: They should have a Law and Order SVU
channel. I mean literally nothing but Law and Order SVU, 24 / 7.
USA is ALMOST the Law and Order SVU channel, but they show
"Monk," which is like, "Oooh, lets give Tony
Shalub an Emmy for not TOUCHING anything!"

ME: Were kind of getting off the track here. Are you
channel surfing or something? Could we get back to... I was going
to say, monkeys, but...

EMMA: I knew you wouldnt be able to do your column about
the seeing-eye monkey biting the little boy. Its not FUNNY.

ME: Well, it wasnt actually a seeing-eye monkey...

EMMA: THAT is not the issue.

ME: I wanted to get back to your letter writing contest.

EMMA: Did I mention theres been a surprise entrant?
J**** wrote me from Prison.

ME: J**** is in prison?? Why is she in prison??

EMMA: No big deal, just a PAROLE VIOLATION. Anyway, she...

ME: What was she on parole for?

EMMA: The POINT is, so far shes written me three
letters. But she only started last week, so shes on pace to
finish up with 15 and take the contest by storm. She says that
all the women in prison wear GRANNY TYPE nightgowns to bed. Is
that possible?

ME: Uh...

EMMA: Hey. If theres anybody reading this who has a pug
dog, an American Bulldog, or a Boston Terrier, I would like one,
if you have a spare.

ME: Im serious, why was she on...

EMMA: And a DVD of "The Wild One." I would like
that, as well.

ME: I...

EMMA: WALLY is back. This conversation is OVER.

BULLWORKER!

Id just returned from a visit to my parents and I had
the feeling that Id left something behind, something vital,
something...

"The Bullworker!" I screamed, and I ran back to the
car and looked behind the seat, and in the back, and on the
floor, and it wasnt there. Id left the Bullworker at
my parents house, 70 miles away.

My first thought was to hop immediately in the car and go back
for it. A man without a Bullworker... can he really call himself
a man? For more than a few days, anyway? After which time the
muscle tone acquired through daily use of the Bullworker for 15
years quickly fades, and he slides from buff to bluff to bleff to
blech to Chris Farley? But time, despite the Bullworker, has
taken its toll on Your Reporter, and I was not up to hopping
immediately in the car and going back for it; I just called,
confirmed it was there, and said Id pick it up next
weekend.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BULLWORKER

The Bullworker was invented by Gert F. Kobel, or
possibly Kurt F. Gobel [insert an umlaut in there
someplace] and was advertised relentlessly in TV
Guide for years, which is where I saw it and
ordered it while I was living in the East
Village, just before the junkies broke in and
stole my TV, after which I stopped buying TV
Guide except for the Fall Preview issues. The
Bullworker is, according to the booklet that
comes with it, the most effective exercise devise
EVER. You pull it, push it, compress it, and when
youre done, youre on the road to A
NEW BODY. After I broke it (the Bullworker, not
the body) trying to pry open the door to
Geralds cellar, I sent for another one, and
that one was great, too! And when I got married,
I bought THE BULLWORKER X-5, a completely new,
advanced model, and that one was the greatest of
all! And then I guess the Bullworker people went
out of business because I havent seen an ad
for it since, but thats okay, because
Ive got the BULLWORKER X-5.

END OF A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BULLWORKER

The next weekend I got up early and drove back to my
parents, and they told me Low-Low had borrowed my
Bullworker. I said "Why? Did he think it was edible?"
Low-Low is my cousin and is also called Mr. Five-By-Five, after
the Johnny Mercer song that describes his appearance perfectly.
He has a real name, too, but I forget what it is.

"No, he just want to try it out. I thought it would be
okay, since you werent coming back till today." I
pretended it was okay-- these are my PARENTS, after all-- and I
went over to Low-Lows to get the Bullworker. As soon as he
opened the door, I saw the Bullworker sitting on the coffee
table. I was so relieved I actually smiled at Low-Low.

"Really work up a sweat with that thing," said
Low-Low. I nodded happily, picked up the X-5, checked it for
teeth marks, kept smiling, backed up towards the door, and then
Low-Lows wife said:

"Low-Low, did you ask him about the cat?"

"Nooooo, honey," said Low-Low. "Im
sposed to ask if you can go get the cat. Colleens
worried about the cat. The cats up on the roof for, I
dunno, three days? Colleens worried."

"Um," I said, and Low-Low continued:

"See, Im sort of too big for the ladder?"

"Even after a week using the Bullworker?" I
marveled.

"Colleend really like it if you could go up on the
roof and check on the cat."

"You got the ladder set up?" I said.

"See, Im sort of too big to set up the
ladder."

So I set up the ladder and went on the roof to check on the
cat. Colleen stood at the bottom of the ladder twisting a
kerchief. The cat was curled up near the base of the chimney. It
blinked its eyes.

"Cats alive," I said. "Can I come down
now?"

"He must be terrified," said Colleen. He didnt
look terrified. He blinked again. "Could you bring him
down?"

"I think if he wants to come down, hell come
down."

"PLEASE!"

I advanced on the cat, who continued blinking. I reached out
and gently picked him up. "Good kitty," I said
hopefully.

My hope was misplaced. He immediately grew about seven extra
claws and began aiming them all towards my face. He was like a
Cuisinart with fur. I held him at arms length and backed
up, congratulating myself that he hadnt scored a hit. I was
still congratulating myself when I took another step backwards
and found that I had run out of roof.

Even as I found myself in mid air, my only thought was of the
poor kitty. "If I can just twist like so," I thought,
"Ill land on the cat, and hell cushion my
fall." To my eternal regret I lost my grip and the cat did
not cushion my fall. Instead he dropped to the ground in slow
motion, landing about 7 minutes after I did. I stood up. The cat
was nonchalantly licking its paws.

"Dont stand up!" cried Low-Low. "You just
fell two stories! We gotta get you to the hospital!"

"Im okay."

But Low-Low wouldnt take no for an answer, and I soon
found myself in the emergency room, getting x-rayed. "Your
blood pressure is very low, considering you just fell off a
roof," said the doctor.

"Bring the cat here, and Ill show you some blood
pressure," I said. Since nothing hurt, they x-rayed
everything. Then, when the x-rays came back, and showed nothing
amiss, the attending physician decided that they must be the
wrong x-rays. So they x-rayed everything again, and got the same
results. Then they yelled at me and sent me home, and returned
their attention to a young man who had had some sort of mishap
involving a peppermill.

"Geez," said Low-Low, "I cant believe you
fell off the roof and didnt break anything." At that
moment I wanted very badly to break something, but restrained
myself. I slid the X-5 behind the seat and headed for home,
reflecting on my miraculous two-story fall. How to account for
it? Was it due to the hours spent working with the Bullworker? To
an exemplary existence? To thinking happy thoughts on the way
down [all concerning the cat]? Personally, I lean to the
exemplary life theory.

If I had my entire life to live again, Id do everything
the same except next time I would go back and get the Bullworker
right away. Also I wouldnt rent "Billy Madison."
But getting the Bullworker right away would be the main thing.

The
Writing on the Wall

I was sitting in the mens room at a Beds
Baths & Beyond in downtown Manhattan this past weekend, where
I found a heartening message on the wall to my right: "Everybody at 126 East 17th
Street stinks." Below that, slightly
larger but clearly written by the same hand with the same red
Sharpie, "Mitch Vogel forgets
NOTHING."Written on the toilet paper
dispenser, possibly although not definitely by Mr. Vogel, were
the words, "KILL
KILL KILL KILL."

Granted, Mr. Vogel is not much of a threat to
breach the covers of Bartletts Familiar Quotations any time
soon, but his writing has a certain undeniable energynot to
mention pithand in time he could develop into a formidable
literary stylist, assuming he remains at large and untreated.

I was heartened because it had been years since
I had come across any original restroom graffito at all. It was
not always so. Once, not all that long ago, some of the best
writing in America could be found on rest room walls. And much of
the worst toolets not gloss over the fact that at
least 90% of the stuff on those walls was witless, unoriginal,
lacking in panache.

But who can forget the thrill of watching a
vigorous debate unfold slowly over the course of a month or two
on the wall above the toilet dispenser in your favorite stall. On
Monday there would be a premise written in Black Flair:

"I like grils!"

On Thursday, a blue all point would respond:

"Dont
you mean girls?"

The following Tuesday, Black Flair would
concede:

"Yeah I meant GIRLS."

And after a pause of two or three weeks, purple
crayon would enter the discussion with:

"But what
about us grils?"

The great thing about an exchange of this sort
was the slow tempo. You read the most recent posting, ruminated,
went about your daily tasks, and five hours lateror five
daysLE MOT JUSTE would spring to mind. In a real-time
conversation, when the perfect response occurs to you five days
after the conversation ends, its a tragedy. Not so with a
discussion conducted on the wall of a toilet stall. And you are
not only winning an argument with someone you dont know,
youre defacing public property. Talk about win-win!

So what happened? Why has it become so rare to
encounter a first rate graffito in a public restroom?

To begin with, we need to examine what is
necessary for graffiti to blossom in a culture. You need (1)
reasonably widespread literacy (2) cheap writing implements (3)
lots of walls (4) no death penalty for defacing same, or
alternately, overweight cops.

Many toilet stalls are now constructed of
graffiti-resistant material, so that even if the wall can be
marked, it can be easily removed. This all but eliminates the
slow-motion conversations, and of course the knowledge that your
witty bon mot will be gone as soon as the janitor shows up
tonight is a powerful deterrent. Who wants to write something
nobody will read except the guy who cleans it off?

Of course the Internet has siphoned off much of
the literary talent that was once restricted to committing its
best work to dry wall and cinderblock. Now when you break up with
your girlfriend, theres no need to scrawl "for a good
time call Zelda" and her phone number in the Bijou
mens room. Not when you can post her picture and email
address, on a "Crazy Chicks Looking for Ugly Guys to Satisfy
Our Demented Urges!!" website and sell her underpants on
eBay.

Yet, at the same time, the Internet has served
to preserve many specimens of graffiti that would otherwise be
lost. When I first googled "graffiti," I got 8 straight
pages of outdoor urban graffitithe panoramic, spray-painted
tags found on subway trains and tunnels, executed in
Brooklyn-style bubble letters or Bronx-style spiky letters. This
is often excellent as vandalism, but this sort of graffiti is not
what concerns me in this essay. I almost despaired of finding
what I was looking for, until I changed my search to
bathroom graffiti, at which point I found endless
sites devoted to documenting this vanishing art form.

I liked this, from first floor mens
restroom in the science block at The University of East Anglia,
in Norwich UK:

Don't beam me up Scottie,
I'm taking a du

And, from the 2nd floor womens room
in the Library building at University College
Dublinwritten on the left wall:

*TOILET TENNIS*

look right

Written on the right wall:

look left.

This, notes the cultural anthropologist who
recorded it, could keep you going for a while.

I would like to close with two favorites,
unrecorded until now, from my own observations. On the inside
door of stall three in the bathroom on the 8th
floor of the NYU film school circa 1976, someone had written,
in a clear, tight hand:

"We hate you."

Who were They, and why did They hate Me? I
have no idea, but it has given me food for thought for nearly
30 years.

And about 20 years ago, a brief exchange
above the urinal in my workplace. In red marker: "SPRINGSTEEN IS
NUMBER ONE." Below that, in black:
"No, what
youre doing now is number one. Bruce is number
two."

One does not have to agree with the sentiment
to appreciate the skill with which it was expressed. Mitch Vogel
himself could not have put it better.

INTERRUPTED MATINEE

It was raining and we were sprawled out in the
Picarillos rumpus room, looking for a monster movie. It
didnt take long, since it was 1964 and there were only 7
channels, and two of them didnt come in at all unless Mr.
Picarillo was actually up on the roof holding the antenna.

"Wait, wait," said Picarillo.
"Go back one. I heard monster-lurking music." Calvano
flipped the switch back. It was a black and white movie (good
sign), with a womanalonewalking through a dark room
(very good sign) and, on the soundtrack, the strings were playing
a tense obligatto which, as Picarillo noted, often terminated
with a werewolf leaping out of the shadows.

But not this time. The tense music ended with
the phone ringing and the woman saying, "Yes? Yes? I
see..." Then, after replacing the phone in the cradle, she
sat down and cried. Picarillo exhaled a long stream of breath
rife with cheese doodles and disappointment. "Change the
channel," he sighed.

"Wait!" said Calvano. "See who
it is??"

We squinted, which did nothing to improve the
bad reception, but as the woman looked up we made out her face:
it was Joan Crawford.

"All right!!" cried Picarillo.
"Yeah!!" I concurred. Calvano relinquished his grip on
the dial and joined us on the floor, where we still sprawled, but
now in rapt anticipation.

We had a vague understanding that Joan was a
movie star of very long standing, but we knew next to nothing
about her career, aside from what she had been doing lately. And
lately what she had been doing was chopping up people with an ax.
She had shown up just a few months before at the Oxford, our only
local movie house, in the low-budget schlockfest
"Straightjacket," with its indelible slogan
"Just tell yourself its only a movie... its only
a movie... its... STRAIGHTJACKET!!"

This afternoons Joan movie was slow
getting into gear. Her husband had just died, there was something
about a troubled daughter, blah blah blah, but pretty soon, we
knew, something was going to push her over the edge and the ax
was going to start swinging. How could it not? We may not have
had a firm grasp of film history, but we understood the concept
of typecasting.

On a very few occasions, its true, we had
been disappointedwe once sat all the way through "High
Noon" because Lon Chaney Jr. was in it, and he had NOT
turned into a werewolf (even though it would have pepped things
up considerably if he had). But in general Hollywood threw us few
curves of this sort. So there we were in the rumpus room,
patiently waiting for Joan to flip out, and urging her on with
"Chop him up, Joan!" whenever somebody gave her a hard
time. Eventually we attracted Mrs. Picarillos attention.

"What POSSESSES you boys??" she
cried. Mrs. Picarillo did not approve of scary movies in general,
and ax murder movies in particular. She looked at the window. The
rain had slackened, but not enough for her to throw us out.
"Whats playing at the Oxford?"

"Theres no monster movie
matinee," said Picarillo. "Its just the regular
movie."

"Yeah," I said. "My sister saw
it. That guy from that Breakfast at Tiffanys
movie is in it. She likes him."

"Well, that sounds like... like a lot of
fun," said Mrs. Picarillo, hurriedly rummaging around in her
purse. "Why dont you boys... run down to the Oxford
and see that?"

"As soon as this is over," said
Picarillo. "I think shes going to decapitate somebody
any second."

"No no no NO!" said Mrs. Picarillo.
"Go see the NICE movie at the Oxford! Go!" She had
fished four or five dollars in change from her pursemore
than enough to get us into the movie and keep us provided with
soda and jujubes for the duration. "Go! Waittake the
umbrella!" Calvano and I looked at each other, amazed she
was letting Picarillo go out into the rain. Normally she
wouldnt even let him venture into a damp fog, for fear he
would come down with pneumonia. She thrust an umbrella into
Picarillos hands and sent us on our way, even as the
musical score of the Joan Crawford movie teased us with an
ominous arpeggio.

"Somebodys getting his head shopped
off right now, I bet," grumped Calvano as we turned the
corner and headed towards the Oxford, 6 blocks away in the middle
of down town.

If Mrs. Picarillo hadnt been a very
conscientious mother, the afternoon would have probably passed
without incident, aside from the periodic kicks Calvano and I
administered to Picarillo to get him to stop TWIRLING the
umbrella. But Mrs. Picarillo was on the phone as soon as we were
out the door, informing our parents that we were going to the
movies. She called Mrs. Calvano first, and the conversation went,
more or less:

Mrs. Picarillo: I just wanted to tell you, the
boys went to the movies, so"

Mrs. Calvano: The movies?? They went to the
Oxford??

Mrs. Picarillo: Yes, and they should be home
by...

Mrs. Calvano: The Oxford is showing THE
CARPETBAGGERS!!

Mrs. Picarillo: YAAAAAAAA!!

The MPAA rating system was still half a decade
away and The Carpetbaggers was about as steamy as it
got in 1964. It had a much bigger budget than
"Straightjacket," which perhaps accounts for the fact
that it had not one but two slogans: "This Is Adult
Entertainment," and "It Is Unlikely That You Will
Experience In a Lifetime All That You Will See in The
Carpetbaggers." The cover of the paperback of the Harold
Robbins novel it was based upon featured a girl in a slip sitting
on a mattress. One strap of her slip had fallen off her shoulder.
Hubba hubba! Its no wonder that Mrs. Picarillo thought she
was going to draw a substantial jail term for paying our way into
such a thing.

To this day I havent seen The
Carpetbaggers so I cant tell you whether it lived up
to its book jacket and its slogans. We were still a block away
from the movies when the Picarillo family station wagon cut us
off and Mrs. Picarillo screamed, "Boys! Boys! Get in the
car! Get in the car!" We assumed there was some dire
emergency and piled in. "Mom, whatsa matter?" Picarillo
asked over and over, but Mrs. Picarillo just shook her head. She
pulled up to the curb outside their house and we got out, totally
baffled. "What about the movie?" said Picarillo.

She went into the kitchen and called Mrs.
Calvano, to tell her that we had not been exposed to the
salacious George Peppard movie after all. We went back into the
rumpus room to watch the end of the Joan Crawford movie. When the
credits rolled we tried to figure out if shed chopped off
any heads while we were walking to the movies or not.

"Of course she did," said Calvano.
"Otherwise the movie woulda had no point at all."

It was impossible to argue with that.

REDEEMED

I had been the Assistant Senior Patrol Leader
of Troop 11 for nearly a year, and Im afraid I did not take
the burdens of my office as seriously as I might have. I had no
interest in being a Troop Leader. Id have been perfectly
happy remaining in the Panther Patrol for my entire tenure in the
Boy Scouts, happily ignoring the Scoutmasters instructions
about pulling up my knee socks and making "Blatt!"
noises with my hand in my arm pit when he turned around. But the
previous June the adults who ran the troop announced that Bobby
Appledorn was going to be the new Senior Patrol Leader and that I
was the new Assistant Senior Patrol Leader. I dont know if
this was some sort of character building idea or if the grown-ups
had opened one six pack too many during the deliberations, but
there it was. I was flattered. It didnt occur to me that I
could refuse. So I spent the year with my hand in my armpit a
little less frequently than I might have, but otherwise
unchanged. This made me popular with a certain unsavory element
in the troop, and I suppose it may have paid dividends now and
again since it allowed the Senior Patrol Leader and me to play
good cop / bad cop when some minor mischief arose, but by and
large I was useless and I knew it. I had completely lost interest
in Boy Scouting by the end of the year.

Traditionally the Assistant Senior Patrol
Leader became the Senior Patrol Leader, and I had decided that I
would, when the time came, regretfully announce my retirement.

It turned out that these things were decided at
a yearly Organization Meeting, where the Scout Master, his
associates, the Senior Patrol Leader, and, I discovered to my
surprise, the Assistant Senior Patrol Leader, would choose the
new ruling hierarchy. It was relatively informal, with lots of
things along the lines of "Lets put Jimmy Emerson in
as the Raccoon Patrol Leaderhes finally gotten that
hair cut, and Id like to see what he can do." But when
the time came to discuss the new Senior Patrol Leader, the tone
changed. The Scoutmaster said, "Are there any
nominations?" To my amazement, someone nominated
my cousin Glen. "Any more nominations?"

Nope.

Well, it was one thing to retire, and another
thing to get pushed out and replaced by your own cousin. Perhaps
noticing the deer-in-the-headlights look on my face, the
Scoutmaster told me that I was more than welcome to stay on as
Assistant Senior Patrol Leader. This was even more insulting,
although Im sure it wasnt intended that way. I
nodded. I thanked him for his offer and declined it. I had come
to the meeting with every intention of announcing that I was
stepping down, but now I was furious. I spoke for about three
minutes, and I must have been pretty good because when I was done
I was the new Senior Patrol Leader. A job, I realized as I walked
home, that I had no interest in or aptitude for whatsoever. But I
didnt care. Id WON.

Like a number of peoplethe late Idi Amin
comes to mindI was a lot better at getting power than I was
at figuring out what to do with it once I got it. I understood
that I couldnt make Blatt! noises with my
armpit and expect to keep the Troops respect. I pulled a
near total 180 and became, instantly, the kind of no-nonsense
martinet I had always despised. This earned me quite a few
blatts of my own. Unlike Idi, I could not actually
EAT the people who failed to show me the proper respect, but I
could (at least on camping trips) make them scrub pots and pans
and police the campsite. Of course no one would pal around with
me, so I would periodically relax. Insanely strict one week,
absurdly permissive the next, nobody knew which Jeff was going to
show up, and eventually they didnt trust either one of us.
I became virtually Nixonesque in my paranoia, although I
wouldnt develop the hairline for 25 years.

Redemption came at summer camp. None of the
usual adults wanted to ride herd over us that year, so they
engaged the Stiles brothers, Richie and Brad. They were twins, 18
or 19 years old and projected a kind of effortless command that I
envied. Everybody did what the Stiles asked, and yet they
werent jerks. They were loose but completely in charge. I
couldnt understand it.

Every evening just before dinner all the troops
would assemble and Uncle Bill, who ran the camp, would cry,
"Troop 7!" The Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 7 would
reply, "Troop 7 All Present and Accounted for SIR!"
There were ten or a dozen troops in residence that week,
including (honest) Troop X, from Paterson. Then the trumpeter
would play "Taps" and we would retire to the mess hall
for the worst meals of our lives. The trumpeter happened to be
Troop 11s own Mike Zinis; he was awful, but at least you
could tell the 24 notes he played were intended to be
"Taps."

"You know," said Richie one night
around the campfire, "I really hate that whole Troop
11 all present and accounted for! junk. I think we ought to
shake things up a little." We all hung on his words.
"What if, tomorrow night, when they call our name, Zinis
blows Da-dah-DAH-dah-DAH [the notes preceding the cry
of Charge! at a football game] and YOU [that is, me],
scream, YEAH!!"

"Well, uh..." I said.

The Troop would have none of my uh-ing.
"Be a man!" "Do it!" "The OLD Jeff
woulda done it!" I understood that this was going to be my
only chance to earn the respect of the troop.

"Okay," I said, and for the first
time since my elevation to Senior Patrol Leader, they cheered me.

Twenty minutes before Assembly, Zinis came down
with, or claimed to come down with, a sore throat. "We
cant do it tonight," he told me.

"If we dont do it, theyll
think IM chickening out," I pleaded. He wouldnt
budge. I knew this was something I had to do or I could never
show my face in front of Troop 11 again. "Well, if you
wont do it, Ill do it! Lemme have that trumpet!"

He laughed, but he gave me the trumpet. He
offered me no advice about playing, and I didnt ask for
any. After all, how difficult could it be? I realized that I
wasnt going to reproduce the Charge! fanfare,
but that was okay. I was going for loud.

We were the 5th or 6th
troop numerically, and I got more nervous with each "All
present and accounted for SIR!" Finally I heard, "TROOP
ELEVEN!"

My hands shook.

"TROOP ELEVEN!"

I blew into the trumpet.

It turns out that you dont get any noise
at all out of a trumpet just by blowing. I blew harder. Nothing.
Finally I inadvertently pursed my lips and made a tiny
"poot!" noise. All right, nobody could blame me for
screwing up the trumpet part. I was determined to make my
"YEAH!" reverberate over the lake for decades. I filled
up my lungs and screamed. Unfortunately, what came out was
"WUUGG!"

Later, around the Troop campfire, Brad said,
"The trumpet was a good try. If anyone is at fault
trumpet-wise, its Mike, and hes got a sore throat.
But the wuugg is something else."

"I meant to say, Yeah," I
explained.

"Indeed," said Richie. "Well, in
some ways, I think the wuugg was better than the Yeah. With
Yeah Uncle Bill wouldve just thought you were
disrespectful. But with the wuugg, he thinks
youre crazy."

"We kind of think youre crazy,
too," said Brad.

I nodded happily. Id redeemed myself in
the eyes of Troop 11.

Fireworks

The week before the Fourth of July, the
Ukrainian coffee shop down the block from my apartment was
offering what they called a "Red White and Blue
Breakfast"Eggs Any Style (white, more or less, though
with strong yellow highlights), a glass of tomato juice (red),
and home fries, to which had been added blue food coloring. It
cost $1.50 and I could not resist it. I arrived at the Custom
Neon Sign Shop morning after morning with blue lips. Blue lips
were not all that unusual in the East Village, where I lived, but
they did raise some eyebrows in Little Italy, where (in theory) I
designed and constructed neon signs for a living.

"This is Day Four with the blue lip
thing," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "Its not
attracting customers. Not the kind of customers we want, anyway.
And, we are about to expand into a lucrative sideline where blue
lips are even less of an asset." I scrubbed my mouth with
Listerine while he explained. "Were selling fireworks
to teenagers from New Jersey. You gotta get that stuff off your
mouth because youre the main sales guy, on account of you
speaking the lingo."

"The lingo?"

"You grew up in New Jersey, you tole me.
Youre one a THEM. Theyll trust you. Anyway,
thats the way Unca Danny sees it."

I nodded. There was a lot of blue streaking the
sink, but my lips were still blue. Light blue now, like an
asphyxiation victim. "I thought selling fireworks was
illegal."

"We dont pay for the fireworks? We
get them on consignment?" I was prepared to hear that
hed found them in the back of a station wagon
or something like that, because he was always finding
things in the backs of station wagons. But it was nothing so
shady.

"Nah. See, I send the prospects to you.
They tell you what they want. You say, Yeah, we can help
you out there  or whatever that would be translated
into Jersey talkand you collect the money. Usually whatever
they want is something you have just a few of left, so its
gonna run them some bucks. You follow?"

"Um."

"Then you tell them youll be back
with the fireworks in 45 minutes. And thats that."

"Wait... When you say, thats
that.... You really mean thats that,
dont you? They dont get the fireworks? And we just
keep their money?"

"In a sense."

"In a sense?"

"Well, eventually well spend the
money on something, so were not technically KEEPING it.
Also, we gotta give Unca Danny 20%. But the part about them not
getting the fireworks is correct. And why should they? Fireworks
are illegal." He punched me on the arm and laughed
uproariously again. "Well. Your lips look almost normal.
Lets get to work."

We first set up for business outside by a used
record store on Bleeker Street, well known for attracting teenage
Jersey-ites with too much money. Mulberry Street Joey Clams would
strike up conversations with likely prospects inside, and send
them out to me, and I would close the deal. Then we would move to
a new location while the kids from New Jersey waited for us to
return.

Mulberry Street Joey Clams emerged from the
record store about three minutes after I had sent his first
prospects on their way. "Where are they?" he asked.
"Did you get the money?"

"I couldnt make the deal," I
explained.

"Why not?"

"They wanted M-80s. You could blow
your hand off with one of those."

"Okay. Okay. Okay. Joke time is over. I
unnerstand whats going on here. These are your PISANS. You
can't bring yourself to rip them off. Im the same way when
it comes to... uh... Well, anyway, I unnerstand. But YOU gotta
unnerstand: we cant give Unca Danny 20% of nothing.
Because," he said, doing a rapid-fire mental calculation,
"that would work out to nothing. He wouldnt be
happy." I nodded.

"Ill do better," I said, but in
fact I did not. I was a terrible fireworks salesman. We tried
switching. I went into the record store and Mulberry Street Joey
Clams stood on the corner waiting for prospects. After about half
an hour he came in to see what was going on.

"Check this out," I said, "An
album by JACK PALANCE! And he wrote all the songs HIMSELF!"
I had discovered quite a lot of interesting vinyl, in fact.

"Back outside," he said. "Look,
I just talked to Unca Danny. Hes worried about us.
Hes wondering why so far weve managed to not sell any
fireworks at all. This is not good. In five minutes Im
going to send you that fat kid with the crew cut over there. You
will collect $20 minimum. "

Once again, though, I was unable to consummate
the deal. The fat kid with the crew cut emerged from the record
store, looked around, asked me if I was the guy with the
fireworks. I pretended I couldnt speak English. He looked
puzzled. Mulberry Street Joey Clams, watching from across the
street to see if he could figure out what was wrong with my sales
pitch, looked even more puzzled.

"It sounded like you were talking Pig
Latin or something," he said.

"It was Jersey talk," I explained.
"Turns out HE didnt speak the lingo. Maybe hes
from Long Island?"

"I sense your heart isnt in this.
But anyway, we gotta go back to the shop. Unca Danny wants to
talk to us."

Uncle Danny was sitting at the Custom Neon Sign
Shop desk. He narrowed his eyes as we walked in.
"Whats the matter with your lips?" he said.

"I had blue homefries," I explained.

"I would avoid them in the future. So why
is it you two could not sell any fireworks?"

Mulberry Street Joey Clams shrugged, but it was
a shrug that might as well have been a neon sign reading,
Its Jeffs Fault. Ask Jeff. Unca Danny
turned to me. "I hope you got an excellent explaination.
Because otherwise Im inclined to collect 20% of what I
figure you SHOULDA sold, which would come to around five hunnerd
bucks."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams made an
eep noise.

"The fat kid..." I said. "We
were gonna sell him some fireworks..."

"Yes?"

"But I couldnt sell to him."

"Why?"

I took a deep breath. "I think he was
wearing a wire."

Uncle Danny nodded. At first I thought that
meant he had judged it an excellent explaination, but in fact it
did not. Not only did he make us pay 20% of what we should have
sold, he charged us a hefty fee for storing the fireworks.

THE MARK OF EMMA

I walked into my apartment and found the New
York Times in very bad shape. At first glance I thought it had
been torn asunder in a rage, but upon examining the fragments I
found it had been slashed to pieces with a very sharp blade, like
a new guest at the Bates Motel. "Emma?" I said.

There was a grunt from the other room, where
the aforementioned Emma was watching TV. "Whats the
story with the newspaper here?"

"What newspaper?"

"The one thats sort of cut up and
scattered all over the place."

"Oh. Oh yeah. I was, you know, making the
Mark of Zorro."

"The Mark of Zorro."

"Yes. Its a Z," she
explained.

"I know its a Z. But..." My
but hung in the air for several minutes...

No, hold on. That didnt come out quite
right. DO OVER.

"I know its a Z. However..." My
however hung in the air for several minutes. There
was no point in asking why she was making the Mark of Zorro nor
in asking any of the other questions that were bobbing around on
the surface of my brain. Kids just DO make the Mark of Zorro.
And, occasionally, they leave the Times in 80 pieces all over the
apartment.

But kids who are 19? Kids 2 months away from
their Junior year in college?

I went into the other room and took a look at
the TV. She was watching "Rocky III." So it didnt
appear to be one of those media-driven frenzies. Unless, perhaps
there was some sort of psychic misfire, and some kid in Omaha
watching a Zorro movie was seized with an inexplicable urge to
beat up Mr. T. I picked a slice of Times off my bed.

"Emma," I said, "Where did you
make the mark of Zorro?"

"Front page of section
B," she said.

"Were you by any chance, I dont
know, stretched out on the bed when you were Zorroing
around?"

"Thats not a real word. But yes, I
believe I was."

"I believe you was as well. There appears
to be a Z carved into the surface of my
comforter."

Silence from the other room, broken eventually
by a chorus or so of Eye of the Tiger.

"You know, as bizarre as it would be to
slice up the Times ANYWHERE, its really NUTS to do it using
my BED for a cutting board!"

"Oh, right! Blame ME!"

I made a sputtering noise for quite a while.
"Well," I said at last, when I was able to hold the
sputtering in check, "See, the reason for that is, you did
it, and you admitted doing it. So I thought I was apportioning
the blame pretty accurately."

"How do you know there wasnt a Z on
your comforter already?"

"Because there wasnt."

"How do you know it wasnt made
during a previous Zorro-ing, as you call it?"

"Have there been previous Zorroings on my
bed?"

"There... MAY have been."

"Thats interesting, I guess, but I
dont see how that changes the situation. Whats the
difference whether you sliced up my comforter THIS time or during
some previous episode?"

"You cant basically go, Oh, go
ahead, make the Mark of Zorro on the bed, its fine,
like 800 times and then on the 801st time go,
"AAAAHHH! Youve been making the Mark of Zorro on my
bed! AAAAAHHH!"

"I DIDNT say go ahead and make
the Mark of Zorro on my bed. Not 800 times. Not once!"

"I said BASICALLY. Silence implies
consent. You LET me do it over and over and over, and so I
naturally assumed you were fine with it. Then suddenly
youre all, Eek, a mouse! about it."

Although we continued in this manner for a
while, eventually I coaxed an apology out of somewhere and there
the matter would have rested had I not then decided to make some
toast. Although I had dropped four slices of bread into the slots
of the toaster, it was not the smell of toast that rose to my
nostrils. It was, I quickly discovered, the smell of a plastic
soda bottle which someone had deposited in one of the slots
sometime earlier. Fortunately it had not melted enough to wreck
the toaster, only enough to stink up the building for a week or
so. Let me spare you the preliminaries this time and go directly
to the defenses closing argument:

"Its possible that I accidentally
dropped the Pepsi bottle cap into the toaster. The box of straws
is right there, so I was, probably, in the area. Plus, I was
looking for a cap for the two liter bottle and I couldnt
find it, which supports your theory, and also explains why I was
forced to drink the entire bottle. But you said yourself you
hadnt made any toast for two or three days. A lot of people
could have had access to the toaster in that time. No, I
cant NAME anybody off the top of my head. But you
werent here for all of the previous 48 hours. Neither was
I. How can either of us say FOR SURE whether or not someone else
put the cap in the toaster? Id have to agree its a
good bet that I could have done it... by accident... but is that
the standard of proof here? Shouldnt we be ABSOLUTELY
CERTAIN before we begin discussing
consequences?"

The judges ruling: "No."

The combination of an intelligence finely honed
by endless reruns of "Law and Order" with a sensibility
that discards bottle tops in toasters and slices little
"z"s all over my comforter does not bode well for my
peace of mind this summer.

Eight more weeks till school starts.

KISSY
BEARS

A man walks into a bar and orders a beer. The
bartender says, "You might say this is none of my business,
but Id say you need a bath a lot more than you need a
beer."

The man nods and says, "Is anybody here a
lawyer?"

"It was just some free advice,
friend," says the bartender, putting a beer in front of the
man. "You can follow it or not follow it but it was meant in
a spirit of constructive criticism. I dont see any grounds
for a law suit, especially since you are more than a little on
the ripe side."

"Ive had several baths already
today. If Id walked in here three or four baths ago, the
smell wouldve have blistered the paint off the walls and
peeled the labels off your bottles. Im thinking of
strapping myself to the roof of my car and going through the car
wash a time or two to see if that might do something to alleviate
the problem. Im thinking about talking to a lawyer because
I want to sue the florist for delivering the wrong flowers."

"If they smell like that, they were the
wrong flowers indeed," says the bartender.

"Well, it started on Valentines
Day," says the man, although nobody has asked him. "I
ordered some flowers to be delivered to my girl friend at her
office. That afternoon I gave her a call and she sounded about 12
dollars more pleased than I thought she should. It turned out
that instead of the 28 dollar "Cute n
Sassy" arrangement, theyd sent the "Q-T Pie"
special, which included two kissy bears and should have cost me
45 dollars."

"So your girl friend should have been even
five dollars happier than she was."

"Correct, but I couldnt rightly
complain about getting only twelve dollars more enthusiasm than I
paid for rather than seventeen dollars more."

"So your contemplated lawsuit is not
against your girl friend."

"Not hardly," says the man.

"Yet I cant imagine you could sue
the florist for giving you even better flowers than you asked
for," the bartender rejoins. "Not to mention two kissy
bears, whatever they might be."

"They would be two little stuffed bears
joined to each other at the lips, as you might suspect..."

"Do bears actually have lips? I mean, can
they pucker up and so on?"

"I suspect not. Anyway, what actually
connects the kissy bears is a string, which has an end
terminating in each bear-head. You pull the bear apart as far as
the string will allow, and then the tension on the string draws
them back together, As they move back together, a recorded voice
inside one bear or the other says, I wuv you!
followed by a long smooching sound."

"That sounds pretty awful," the
bartender admits.

"Truth be told, the girl friend is not
really a kissy-bear sort of person, which probably accounts for
the five dollar gap between the cost of the arrangement and the
actual enjoyment derived there-from. The kissy bears came close
to being discarded along with the flowers themselves when the
latter began to wilt a week or ten days later, but I said,
Well, wait a minute. My sister likes stuffed animals and
things like that. If you dont mind, Ill just pass
those on to her."

"And of course your sisters reaction
would probably more than cover the five dollar enthusiasm
gap."

"I apologize," says the bartender,
though the guy kind of doubts the bartenders sincerity on
this count. "So did your sister love the kissy bears? How
old is the tike, by the way?"

"56, and already reading at a third grade
level, thank you. My sister has not yet made the acquaintance of
the kissy bears. I brought the kissy bears home, with the idea
that I would wait until a suitable occasion, such as a birthday,
to present them to the sister. Well, from time to time Id
pull the bears apart and make them perform their little routine,
and..."

"To amuse yourself?"

"Sometimes to amuse myselfit
doesnt take much..."

"Apparently not..."

"...And sometimes experimentally. For
instance, when I received a call from a telemarketer, I would
answer the phone and engage the bears repeatedly to see how many
I wuv you! * smoooooch!*  repetitions it would take
to make him or her hang up. The record was 19 times. Well, one
afternoon I was sitting on the front porch reading a book, bears
handy in case the phone rang, and a large dog belonging to one of
my neighbors happened by. In the spirit of scientific curiosity I
said, "Brutus! Look at this, boy!" and pulled the two
bears apart. As soon as the bears began saying I wuv
you! Brutus did that akimbo look that dogs are so good
atthe cock-eyed thing with one ear up and one ear down? And
you know that puzzled "yarf??" noise they do? He did
that. And when the bears made the smooch noise, he took off at a
dead run, absolutely terrified."

"So of course you decided you would never
do THAT again, because it would be cruel."

"Well, sort of," says the man,
"in a way. I mean, there are many breeds of dog, and some
might react differently than others to the same stimulus, if you
know what I mean..."

"I think I know what you mean..."

"I mean, I dont want to give you the
impression that I got some sort of enjoyment from getting dogs to
make that "Yarf??" face and then run in terror..."

"Yet that is the impression Im
getting."

"Do you know how many people are mauled by
pit bulls every year? Yet imagine, if everyone had a pair of
kissy bears, that number, whatever it is, would absolutely
flatline. Assuming that it works on pit bulls, which is one of
the breeds I did not manage to kissy-bear-ize. But the incidence
of Chihuahua assaults would drop to zero, guaranteed, at least if
Zuzus reaction is anything to go by. Anyway, I carried out
these experiments for several months, and then I saw this ad in
the paper for a Cutest Kitten contest. Send Us
a Picture of Your Cute Kitten & Win $1000. Now, I
dont happen to have a kitten, but my upstairs neighbor
does, and a day or so before garbage collection day it visits my
back porch and tries to get into my garbage. My plan was to wait
until I heard the kitty, and snap a picture. BUThow to
guarantee the kitty wouldnt take off before I got the
picture? Answer: Kissy bears! Id hear the kitty rummaging
around, creep up to the screen door, pull the bears apart, and
while the kitty was making the kitty equivalent of the
yarf! face, flip on the porch light and get the
picture. What could be cuter than a kitty doing the
yarf! face? My only problem was to get the picture
before the smooch began and sent the kitten racing
away in abject terror.

"Well, to make a long story short,
everything went according to plan up to the moment I snapped on
the porch light. Turns out it wasnt a kitty making a
yarf! face, it was a skunk. I dont know what
kind of face it was making because the face wasnt pointing
in my direction. Anyway, Ive been bathing for three days
now and since none of this would have happened without the
florist screwing up and delivering the wrong flowers, I think
Ive got grounds for a lawsuit. What do you think?"

"I think your idea about strapping
yourself to the car and going through the car wash was
better."

"I was kidding about that,"

"Not me."

MacArthur
Park

Made Easy

A few weeks ago I was dining out with some
friends and the song "MacArthur Park" was mentioned.
Whenever "MacArthur Park" is mentioned the conversation
rapidly zeroes in on the melting cake which figures so
prominently in the chorus. What, everyone demands, is going on
with that cake? Why was it left out in the rain, and who did it?
Why did it take so long to bake? And why is the singer so certain
that he will never have that recipe again?

And so I organized one of my periodic Diner
Symposiums, inviting several erudite friends to meet at an
all-night diner and drink a lot of coffee until we could
definitively answer all these questions. We arrived at the
designated diner at about 10 PM. At about 10:20, the manager
stopped by the table. "I know you guys," he said,
"The last time you bums were here the five a you spent 8
bucks in 9 hours."

"That is not true," I said. "The
last time there were six of us. Kovalesky couldnt make it
tonight." The manager did not ask us to leave in so many
words, but our coffee contained a lot more salt than I personally
like, so we left. The evening might have ended right there, with
the secrets of "MacArthur Park" forever locked away,
but Rory called his buddy Max, who lived only 15 minutes from the
diner, and he graciously invited us to conduct our musicological
investigations at his place. We got several quarts of coffee at a
donut place and proceeded to Chez Max.

It turned out that Max, who is considerably
younger than the rest of us (you may recall that he lent his
Generation X ears to our "Let It Be Naked" symposium
last year) lives with his parents, who were a tad nonplused at
our 11 PM arrival. We adjourned to the basement and got down to
business.

Although we were eager to get right to the
cake, we popped the cassette into my cheap portable tape player
and began with verse one, which goes:

"Spring was never waiting for us, girl /
It ran one step ahead / As we followed in the dance / Between the
parted pages and were pressed / In love's hot, fevered iron /
Like a stripéd pair of pants."

Me: Comments, anyone?

Rory: Dont know if I quite get that.
Pages of what?

Chuck: Why does he say "stripe-ed" in
two syllables like that?

Rory: The pants should either be pressed in a
press or ironed by an iron. You dont press pants IN an
iron.

Toby: I agree.

Me: If were all agreed, onto the chorus.

Rory: What?

Which, you will recall, goes: "MacArthur's
Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet, green icing flowing
down / Someone left the cake out in the rain / I don't think that
I can take it / 'Cause it took so long to bake it / And I'll
never have that recipe again / Oh, no!"

I will omit the protracted discussion of why
Richard Harris sings "MacAthurs" instead of
"MacArthur." It was not edifying. And I will summarize
the conclusion, which, I believe to be correct. (1)
"MacArthur Park is melting in the dark" means that
night is falling, and the Park appears to be melting away. (2)
"All the sweet green icing flowing down" follows from
that initial image, and a lesser lyricist might have stopped
right there and gone on to something else. (3) But, having now
compared the parks vanishing greenery with melting icing,
author Jimmy Webb asks himself: WHY would the icing melt? And he
concludes: (4) "Someone left the cake out in the rain."
(5) Um. (6) This, he realizes, raises more questions than it
answers. Go back? Rewrite? Nah! (6a) In fact, I suspect that once
that cake got out in the rain, Mr. Webb may have murmured the 5
most dangerous words in the English language: "Hey, this
thing writes itself." Anyway... (7) "I dont think
that I can take it." "It" is the melting cake.
BUT. Not really. The cake has now become a (8) METAPHOR
(Literally, Greek for "The Author Is On Drugs") for...
(9) the stuff the song is really about, which is (10) um.

Here we paused because Maxs mother called
down, "Would you boys please not make so much noise?"
This was, on the one hand, a blast from the pastI
havent someones mom say that to me in about 30
yearsand on the other hand, very very weird, because
Maxs mom is a good ten years younger than all of us boys
except Max.

So we listened to the chorus again, this time
at a much reduced volume. We concluded that the cake is a
metaphor for the whole MacArthur Park experience in the song.
Which, once you get past the stripéd pants and the question of
just how to get the wrinkles out of them, appears to be about
romping with a hippie chick in a yellow dress while
simultaneously waxing bitter sweetly nostalgic about same, even
though its STILL HAPPENING.

And there matters would be left, had it not
been for the amazing cover version of "MacArthur Park"
by Frank Sinatra, which clarifies all these matters once and for
all. This is not the cut on his 1980 "Trilogy" album
but an unreleased rehearsal (I assume) with a completely
different arrangement, circa 1969, judging from the voice. How
this got into Rorys hands I know not, since its
almost inconceivable that it could ever have been released
commercially. ("Almost," because there is, after all,
Franks official recording of "Mrs. Robinson,"
which includes such remarkable lines as "The PTA, Mrs.
Robinson / Won't OK the way you do your thing / Ding, ding, ding
/ And you'll get yours, Mrs. Robinson / Foolin' with that young
stuff like you do / Boo, hoo, hoo; woo, woo, woo" and
"So how's your bird, Mrs. Robinson / "Dandy", Mrs.
Robinson you'd say / Hey, hey, hey / Well have you heard, Mrs.
Robinson / Mine is fine as wine, and I should know / Ho, ho,
ho."

My transcription of some selected verses of
Franks "MacArthur Park" follows. For my money,
THIS is the definitive version:

Spring was never waiting for us,
girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Uuuuuuhhhwas it somethin that I said?
Yeah Ive seen that look before, uh-huh
Aw gimme one more chance...

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
That coo-coo nutty cake
There must be some mistake
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

(spoken) The rain in Spain falls
mainly on the cake. (laughter)

[instrumental break]

There will be another swingin chick
And I will digherthe most
And if that swingin chick dont dig me back
That swingin chick she willbetoast
I will have another glass of vintage wine
Dont mind if I doo-bee-doo-bee-doo
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I am stillthecatforyou

There will be another coo-coo cake
Yeah, I will frost it
But I wont take this cake into the park
Thats where I lost it
I will have the things that I desire
Oh baby I am goin outta my tree
And after all the chicks I have known
After all the chicks I have known
I'll be thinking of you
You are the one for me
Oh yeah

[extended break]

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Has there been a cake so nutty?
It aint cake its Silly Putty!
Mama dont you make that recipe again!

Oh, no!
Oh, no
No, no
Oh no!!

A-CAULKING WE
WILL GO

"When I was a child I spake as a
child," said Shakespeare or somebody who used words like
spake, "I [something] [something] [something];
but [something] [something] [something about putting away
childish things]."

Yes, exactly.

What he meant by that is, at a certain age, you
just cant get away with squirting Silly String anymore.
Its not that you dont want to squirt Silly String, or
that the opportunities no longer arise. But youre now a
grown-up, spaking like a grown-up. And instead of being grounded
for a couple of days, you get a dry cleaning bill and possibly an
afternoon in small claims court where the judge is apt to rule
that "I thought it would be pretty funny if I shot a big
blob of Silly String down the front of his pants" does not
constitute a mitigating circumstance. In fact, once you get to be
40 or 45, you cant even have a can of Silly String sitting
around the house without raising eyebrows. You can get away with
a can or two of aerosol cheese, maybe, but it doesnt have
the same propellant you find in Silly String and if youre
not in point blank range, forget it.

No, if you have the irresistible urge to squirt
glop out of a can and youre older than the Olsen twins, you
have to grab a caulking gun and CAULK something. Something like
an attic. Which is what I was asked to do, and just in time,
because Id been resisting the urge to squirt glop out of a
can since 1978, and if you said the tension appeared to have
taken its toll on my hairline, I could not swear you were wrong.

You dont want to go caulking
alonecaulking is one of those male bonding things, like
scrambling the letters on a movie marquee so they spell something
dirty, or turning off the sound during "Nightline" so
you can say rude things about Ted Kopels haircut. On the
other hand, you dont want to go caulking with too many
guys. Three guys heading up to the attic with caulking guns will
create in onlookers the desire to say things like "Nyuk!
Nyuk! Nyuk!" You dont want that.

So it was that I went caulking with Dom.
Appropriately enough, it was the eve of the 60th anniversary of
D-Day. Dom is not technically a D-Day veteran, but he did have a
traumatic date with Mary Reparata 40 years ago, from which he
still hasnt quite recovered.

The roof of the attic had recently been
replaced, and there were a couple of vents that kept that place
from feeling like a convection oven. There was wasps nest
in the roof of one vent, but since the vent was screened off, Dom
and I were able to make some choice comments about the wasps, and
their mothers. The wasps were not amused, but they couldnt
get through the screen. Dom and I high fived. Thus, with the
preliminary male bonding ritual concluded, we inserted our
caulking tubes into the chambers of our guns and got to work.

There were some interesting floorboards, as
there often are in old attics. In addition to the usual sheets of
plywood, random 2 X 4s, and aluminum "Win with
Wilkie!" signs you always find, there were also sheets of
glass. Glass being more or less transparent, I did not notice
some of these sheets immediately. In some cases I did not notice
them until, like butterflies emerging from cocoons, they
abandoned their boring rectangular shapes and blossomed forth
into a plethora of brilliant triangles and dazzling trapezoids.
If anything, they were made even more brilliant and dazzling by
the streaks of blood I contributed to the spectacle.

Most of the cracks in the walls were easily
sealed by a thin bead of caulk, usually no more than four or five
inches long and frequently less. Daylight was visible around some
of the window frames, and sealing these required a bit more
caulk. In fact, it required a lot of caulk.

"Man!" said Dom. "I used a whole
tube of caulk on this one window, and I can still see daylight!
This is a thirsty attic, lemme tell you!" I reluctantly
picked a few festive shards of glass from my knees and joined
him. I placed the nozzle of my gun at the space between right
side of the frame and the wall, and Dom placed his between the
left side and the wall.

"We have to use a light touch. We
dont want this to shoot this stuff through the wall so you
can see it from the outside."

"Absolutely."

In the end, it took slightly more than three
tubes to seal off that insatiable window. We rested for a few
moments, and then Dom, using a mummified squirrel, applied direct
pressure to one of my severed arteries.

We had to cross the street to get a decent view
of the attic window that had absorbed so much caulk. I confess
there was still a fear that some of the caulk had leaked all the
way through the openings and would be visible from street level.
This fear was misplaced, Im happy to report. Aside from one
tiny dab of white that might have been the work of a pigeon
(albeit a pigeon with a caulking gun), the window looked fine.

Almost as fine as the porch roof, where,
directly below the now-sealed attic window frame, two huge piles
of white glop sat, like three-foot high servings of Mr. Softee,
slowly drying in the afternoon sun.

ASK THE
PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY

A NOTE TO OUR READERS FROM THE CHIEF
EXECUTIVE EXPERT GUY: Im sure you all join me in extending
a warm welcome back! to the Pineapple Core Expert
Guy, who returns after nearly a month of gallantly filling in for
the Successors to Shemp Expert Guy (now back on the
job, following a nasty case of food poisoning). And a big
thanks! to the Pineapple Core Expert Guys
intern, Jorge, who kept this column up and running in the
meantime!

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

I followed your advice about carving festive
little animals from pineapple coresremember your
pineapple scrimshaw column? And while the results are
certainly cute (not to say adorable!), they are getting a little
pungent. The whole house smells like over-ripe pineapple. I
suppose there are worse things for a house to smell like, but
still. What is to be done?

(signed)

Getting pretty good at seeing the inner hippo
or whatever in a given chunk of pineapple core

DEAR GETTING:

Apparently the column was edited for space in
your local paper. I noted that the core of the pineapple, while
inedible, was still pineapple, which is to say still a fruit, and
that those little yellow figurines are not going to last forever.
People, they are ORGANIC, which is a GOOD thing, but listen up:
they aint Fisher Price toys! The ever-resourceful Jorge has
suggested dipping them in polyurethane, which would certainly
extend the life of your new tchochke, but if youre going to
do THAT you might as well carve them out of styrofoam peanuts in
the first place, nest pas? And by the way, while were
on the subject of Jorge, I must second the Chief Executive Expert
Guys Thanks! As one of my readers wrote,
"We could barely tell you were gone!" Here here! And as
another remarked, "Lets see some stricter immigration
laws!" (Just kidding, Jorge!) (See the editorial page of the
paper for the addresses of your state and local legislators).

*

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

I for one think you did a great job over at the
Successors to Shemp column. So many people act like
the series went totally down hill after Shemp left the Stooges
(in fact, a lot of people act like the whole franchise came to an
end when Curly stepped down!). I was not one of those people, but
you still opened my eyes to an oft neglected chapter in
Stooges history. Loved the Pineapple Core Origami column, too!

(signed)

Big Fan of Yours Wherever You Go

DEAR BIG FAN:

Thank you so much. The fact is that I learned a
great deal during my brief stint in the Stooge department, and
Im delighted to report that I put the time off
to good use: my new book, "The Man Who Would Be Shemp: The
Life and Art of Joe deRita" has been accepted for
publication by the University of Hoboken Press. (And by the
wayCamille, where IS that forward??) Jorge wrote the
origami column. Thanks for writing.

*

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

Whats your take on genetically modified
pineapples? I was opposed until my idiot boyfriend cut up a
pineapple and didnt realize there WAS a core, leading to a
mighty interesting eating experience. I would have no objection
to coreless pineapples, or at least pineapples with cores that
were a different color. Your thoughts, sir?

(signed)

Time for a New Core

DEAR TIME:

My thoughts: scary. What if something went
terribly wrong and instead of a delicious pineapple, you got
something where the whole pineapple was hard and spiky like the
outside? Is it worth the risk? No, rather than start splicing
pineapple genes, you might think about getting a genetically
modified boyfriendone with a BRAIN.

*

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

I know you keep saying its
inedible, but dont you mean the pineapple core
is tasteless? Which prompts me to wonder: might it
not be an excellent LOW CARB treat, if properly prepared?

(signed)

Lots more energy since Ive been
low-carbing

DEAR LOTS:

The pineapple core is low carb only
in the sense that the upholstery on your couch is low carb, or
the transmission of your car.

*

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

Who is the good looking fellow who plays Audrey
Hepburns boyfriend in "Breakfast at
Tiffanys?"

(signed)

Hubba hubba

DEAR HUBBA:

I pity the fool who doesnt recognize
handsome George Peppard, quite the dish in his youth. You may
also enjoy ogling the Georgester in "The Blue Max."
[Note: I am note actually calling Hubba a fool. I pity the
fool was the catch phrase from Mr. T, George Peppards
co-star on the TV Show "The A Team."]

*

DEAR PINEAPPLE CORE EXPERT GUY:

I know you are a fan of using citrus
zeststhe outer layer of the citrus rind, which
can add such flair to even the simplest dish or cocktail. I
cant help wondering if the pineapple has a
zest, and if it might not be located at the junction
of the core and the meat?

(signed)

Zesty Pineapples in Our Future, I Hope

DEAR ZESTY.

Wouldnt that be lovely? Alas, the
problems are two fold. Fold number one: The pineapple is not a
citrus fruit. Fold number two: The zest is activated
by rubbing the rind of the fruit against a cheese grater to
release the delicious essence (while leaving the foul pith on the
fruit). The junction of the core and the meat of the
pineapple is not the rind, and what you would get by rubbing this
on a cheese grater is the OPPOSITE of a zest. You would get a
tsez. Thanks for writing.

ALUMINUM SIDING

We had beige aluminum siding installed around
the time I was ten; before that, my father painted the house
bluish-gray every couple of years. "No more scraping,"
he said as the aluminum guys slapped the sheets up against the
back of the garage, "no more mixing, no more nothing."
He sounded sad.

"How come were getting pink aluminum
siding?" I asked.

"Its not pink, its
beige," he said.

"Its not beige, its on
sale," said my mother. "But its a very attractive
color for all that."

"Yeah," said my father. He enjoyed
painting the house. And not only did he enjoy the actual
painting, he enjoyed antagonizing Mr. Burnett, a professional
house painter who lived on our block. Whenever Mr. Burnett
spotted my father on the ladder, he would stroll over and
harangue him.

"What youre doing there,
theres no reason for it. It aint right, Grimshaw.
There oughta be a law about this. An honest working man is
goin without work because of what youre doin,
yknow."

"Are you saying Im doing a lousy
job?" said my father.

"Im saying good and lousy dont
enter into it, is what Im saying. You dont see me
down at my house doin whatever it is you do instead of
hiring a... whatever it is you are, to do it."

Mr. Burnett knew very well that my father
worked for the phone company, but apparently felt that pretending
to be ignorant of this really stuck the needle into my father.

"What is it you do again, Grimshaw?"

"I shovel ashes in the ship yard," my
father said.

Mr. Burnett paused for a moment to regather his
thoughts. "Well, youre takin the food outta the
mouth of an honest working man and his family when you do this
kind of thing."

"Jeff!" my father would say,
"Mr. Burnett is hungry. Go in the house and get him a
cracker."

This conversation, with some unimportant
variations, could be repeated anywhere from three to 15 times
during the course of applying a coat of paint to the house. But
if my father was afraid that putting up the aluminum siding would
end these discussions, he was afraid for no reason. As soon as
Mr. Burnett saw the aluminum siding truck, he was in the front
yard grousing.

"Now this is really something. These boys
sold you a fat bill of goods. This stuff is no good. You get one
drop of water under here, and in six months your house is rotting
away. One good rain, and itll be like living inside an old
tree stump in the middle of a swamp. And the fact is, it
dont last as long as a good honest paint job that
youd get from a good honest working man. Stuff looks tough,
but its just like that aluminum foil your wife bundles the
turkey in. Two hot weeks in the summer, and the whole
housell be hottern a baked potato. Fact. No, I
DONT want no cracker! Im just SAYIN!"

Now reassured that he need not forgo the
pleasure of Mr. Burnetts company because of the siding, my
father concentrated on finding something around the house to
constantly repaint. Eventually, he settled on the front porch
trim. This was just a few strips of wood surrounding the front
door, and a pair of trellises at either end of the porch. Some
variety of ivy climbed up through the trellises so that they were
pretty much hidden from view, but my father decided that it was
necessary to paint them every spring. And this was a major job;
he didnt just scrape, he actually burned away the old paint
with an acetylene torch before he started the first coat. It was
a delicate job, because the trellis was made of very thin wood,
and the application of the acetylene flame had to be done very
carefully; a couple of seconds too long, and the wood would be
charred; a couple of seconds longer, and it would burst into
flame.

This meant that I had to hang around as long as
the torch was lit, or I wouldnt see the conflagration
which, Mr. Burnett assured me, was bound to occur sooner or later
according to the law of averages. Unfortunately (for my
purposes), my father was a meticulous workman, and the wood
rarely even darkened beneath the expertly applied flame of the
torch.

But one day, when my father needed to go inside
to get a wider scraper, he asked me to watch the torch for a
moment. "I dont want to shut it off, Im just
going inside for a second. Can I trust you to watch it, make sure
nobody touches it, including YOU?"

"You sure can!" I lied eagerly. He
gave me a pat on the head and went inside.

I hadnt anticipated this opportunity, so
I had to improvise; I rooted through my pockets to find something
useful, and came up with a small plastic dinosaur-- a
triceratops, if memory serves-- a green one. The
all-but-invisible flame of the torch was pointed up, off the
porch, towards the side yard. I held the triceratops head
in the flame for a second; to my delight, the head vaporized in
the heat. A spray of green plastic was instantly blasted through
the air. Tiny green beads sizzled briefly in the dirt a few feet
away. I had time to dispose of the entire dinosaur in this manner
before my father returned; only the tail and a tiny section of
the rump remained.

I had no further opportunities during that
particular spring, but that gave me an entire year to plan
exactly what I would do the next time I had 3 minutes alone with
the torch. I figured out exactly what I was going to melt, and
how much, and whatever I could not fit in my jacket pockets, I
stored in a cigar box which I stashed in the pachysandra
undergrowth at the side of the porch.

These were not, I should emphasize, merely
objects I was planning to destroy frivolously. I had a GI Joe,
for instance, which I was going to disfigure in precisely the
manner described in a Readers Digest "Drama in Real
Life" article about a soldier who picked up a burning
phosphorous bomb in his bare hands and dropped it out of the door
of the plane, saving everybodys lives and getting the Medal
of Honor. Does that sound frivolous? And I was going to melt down
some of my sisters troll dolls, because there was a rumor
that a certain number of them were actually made from plastic
explosive and these would turn blue if you melted them. This was
serious science type stuff. I had matured considerably from the
thrill-crazed kid a year earlier who had been vaporizing toy
dinosaurs. Though I did have half a dozen toy dinosaurs (in
several different colors) stuffed in my pockets at all times.

I had been sitting on the porch reading
"War of the Wing Men" and handing my dad a rag or a
scraper every now and then for days when he finally left me alone
with the burning torch. As the front door closed behind him, I
sprang into action. I quickly established that my sisters
trolls were all non-explosive; the G.I Joe modification project
did not work out as hoped, because the head simply melted away
before I realized what was happening; and I vaporized four
dinosaurs before my father came out. I stuffed what remains there
were into the cigar box and ditched it in the pachysandra.
Sometime later-- it may have been 15 minutes, it may have been an
hour-- I noticed that there had been a miscalculation. Where last
year the flame had been pointing straight out from the porch and
all waste products had simply leaked into the soil as Nature
intended, this year the flame had been angled differently, and
several blotches of plastic, all over-lapping, in several
different colors, had dried on the side of the house. I panicked.
I decided the only way to get the plastic off the aluminum was to
MELT it off with the torch the next time my father left me alone
for a minute.

With the nonchalance of the completely
demented, I walked over to my friend Mitchs house, told him
to wait ten minutes and call my dad and try to sell him some
magazine subscriptions, and went back home. I waited for the
phone to ring. It didnt ring. The blotches on the wall
seemed to grow. Suddenly Mitch walked up the drive. "Mr.
Grimshaw! You want to buy some magazines?"

"What magazines are you selling?"

"I dunno," said Mitch. "Um...
Boys Life?"

"We get that."

"Oh. Well, see you." He walked away.
I ran after him.

"What are you, stupid? I said CALL!"

"I forgot your number. He dont want
nothing anyway."

Suddenly my father screamed. I trotted to the
porch. He was staring at the spot where the plastic blotch had
been. It was no longer. Now there was a hole the size of a
half-dollar in the siding. "I saw something out of the
corner of my eye on the wall. I think it was a wood spider. Big
one. I got him with the torch. Scared me to death." He
fingered the hole. "Have to do something about this."

Mr. Burnett, walking past with his asthmatic
dog, shook his head. "I told you. That stuff is no good. Two
years and its already full of holes. Outta be a law, is
what I say."

CRIME SPREE

Today the towns where I grew up blend
seamlessly into each otherwithout the "You Have Just
Left Cedar Grove / Little Falls Welcomes You" signs
youd think you were driving through one vast suburban
megalopolis. But 40 years ago houses began to peter out several
blocks from the town limits, and then there were vacant lots,
warehouses, and even weird little forests replete with snapping
turtles, skunks, and soggy old issues of Playboy. If you kept
going, trees, reptiles, and waterlogged magazines eventually gave
way to warehouses again, and soon youd be in the middle of
the next town. Of course all this undeveloped land minutes from
the throbbing Route 46 / Route 3 corridor could not remain
undeveloped for long, and by the time I was 11 or so, there were
industrial villages springing up on these frontiers. You
werent supposed to cut through them because they were
private property, but they would build the things right between
the prime snapping turtle creek and the trees where the big kids
stashed their fireworks, and what were you supposed to do? Go
AROUND them?

So it was that one weekend my cousin Glen and I
were strolling through one of these newly constructed complexes.
Glen was such a straight arrow that Id literally had to
shove him past the no trespassing sign. "Are we
going to get in trouble??" he said. "Just stick wid
me," I assured him. I was pretty much of a straight arrow,
too, but hanging around with Glen made me feel like James Dean in
"Rebel without a Cause," which was why I hung around
with Glen. It also made me talk like Leo Gorcey, but at that
point in my life Leo Gorcey and James Dean seemed equally cool. A
late model sedan appeared from behind one of the buildings,
coasted in front of us, and cut us off. From previous experience
I knew this had to be a security guard, so I quickly whispered to
Glen, "Hes gonna ask us for our names. DONT TELL
HIM YOUR REAL NAME!"

"Uh uh... what should I..."

"Just make one up," I said. Glen was
sweating bullets. The guard, a young man in civilian clothes,
packing, as far as I could see, no heat, got out of the car with
his clipboard. He seemed a little embarrassed about what he was
doing. He said hello, asked us how we were doing, nodded at our
answers, and finally explained that this was private property and
we really werent supposed to be there. I said Oh geez, we
had no idea, he said Well, there you go, and headed back to his
car.

"He didnt ask our names!" said
Glen.

"Well, sometimes they dont," I
said with a shrug.

"I couldnt think of one," said
Glen.

At which point the guard got out of his car
again, and apologetically told us that his boss said he had to
write down our names, purely a formality, just in case, you know,
there had been some vandalism or something...

"Sure," I said. "Im Jerry
Smith."

"Im Jeff Grimshaw," said Glen.

The security guy wrote down our names and we
walked to the woods at the edge of the property. "What did
you say that for?" I hissed.

"I told you I couldnt think of a
name!"

"You thought of mine!"

"Well, you were right there!"

"All right," I said. "You go
back there and you tell that guy you gave him the wrong name!
Just do it! What if somebody like committed a MURDER in one of
these buildings or something? The cops would call my mom and
dad!"

"I cant go back there!!"

"DO IT!" I said, and shoved him back onto the forbidden
property. He hesitated. I gave him another shove. "I am not
taking the rap for this!!" He trotted towards the car. I
watched as the security guy rolled down his window and Glen
engaged him in conversation, and then Glen returned to the woods
at a dead run.

"Cheese it!" he cried as he ran past
me. I caught up with him by the crayfish pond a few minutes
later.

"He got really mad," said Glen, who
was out of breath, but didnt seem upset.

"Because you gave him a fake name? What
did you say?"

"Well... I said, do you remember my
name, and he looked at his clipboard and said, Jeff
Grimshaw, and I said..."

What Glen said can not be printed in a family
newspaper even now, 40 years later, when Dennis Franz bare butt
has been a staple of prime time television for the better part of
a decade. Glen had sworn a blue streak at the baffled security
guy. Glen was not much of a swear-er, so his profanity was not
exactly state-of-the art; some of it was downright inept. But it
was still pretty foul stuff.

"Thats right!" said Glen, and
was off on another dead run. My head swam. I had given Glen one
shove too many. I had pushed him over the edge. I trudged
homeward, certain that the security guy had already contacted my
parents. Your son was trespassing, he would have told
them, and he called me a big hell.

But there was no mention of any high crimes and
misdemeanors at dinner that evening, nor the next day, or the day
after that. I thought I was home free.

Nearly a week later, my father passed me the
string beans and said, "Whats going on with your
cousin Glen?"

"I dunno," I said. "Why?"

"Well, the reason I ask, hes been
running around town swearing at people and yelling, My name
is Jeff Grimshaw! It seems odd."

"Yuh," I said.

"And you dont have any idea why
hed do that."

"Not a clue," I said, but they
didnt believe me.

"You must have done SOMETHING," said
my mother. "People dont just yell Im Jeff
Grimshaw! and swear at people for no reason at all."

"How many people has he sworn at?"

"A lot," said my father.

"Do they think IM doing it?"

"No, of course not." My mother paused
over the carrots. "Did you... MAKE him do it?"

"No! How could I MAKE him do it? Why would
I want to have Glen run around yelling Im Jeff
Grimshaw and swearing?"

"I have no idea," said my mother,
"but it certainly sounds like one of your ideas."

"We dont know what youre up
to," said my father, "but youre going to get your
cousin in trouble, so I want it to stop NOW."

I was speechless.

"Pass the mashed potatoes," said my
father.

THE RETURN OF EMMA

A few weeks back I did a column about an 88
pound Romanian woman who had a 176 pound tumor removed from her
back, and since then many of my readers have decided that I am
the go-to guy when it comes to tumors. "Really liked the
tumor story," begins a typical note. "My aunt had one
(a tumor) the doctors took out which you could write about. I
dont remember how much it weighed but the doctor said it
was the size (almost) of a large marble. This may not sound that
big, but it was very serious." Other readers forwarded wire
service stories about tumor operationsmany of them, I am
sorry to report, unsuccessfulwhich, they felt, I would find
useful for future tumor-themed columns.

Although I am always happy to hear from my
readers, and grateful for their suggestions, I must announce with
some regret that there arent going to be any more
tumor-themed columns, at least not for a while. This means that
you may all now stop sending me tumor stories.

In other news, my daughter Emma has returned
from her semester abroad in Italy, and agreed to be interviewed.

EMMA: Its been going on for a week now,
ever since I got back to the Homeland. Capitalize
"Homeland."

ME: Consider it done. Wait a minuteyou
never said who won the THIRD annual Emma Grimshaw Letter Writing
Contest.

EMMA: Dave Frenson. Psshh! [Possibly a
euphemism for duh, but Im not certain].

ME: How many letters did Mr. Frenson write?

EMMA: Eight or nine. Morgan probably would have
won but Dave had the advantage of living one town closer than
Morgan so he got answers earlier. If Morgan had been living one
town closer, SHE would have won. I got disillusioned a little in
July because people no longer seemed to be writing letters for
the sake of the letters. They were just writing to win the
contest. But this year will be different.

ME: Why?

EMMA: Now well talk about Florence. They
should have passed a doggy-do law. Theres a LOT of doggy
do.

ME: This is Florence Italy, where you spent the
Spring

EMMA: Yeah yeah yeah. They dont have any
cool dogs in Florence, although there were two cute pugs. I named
them Brownie Bojangles and Amerigo Vespucci Bojangles officially.
Wait, back to the letter writing contest. I have two
international entrants. One from Hong Kong and the other from
Russia, although the one from Russia is actually from Saudi
Arabia. Well, not anymore I think. He looks kind of like Trent
from "Daria" only without the gross stuff.

ME: Gross stuff?

EMMA: The sharp chin, the gross goatee, the
too-many piercingsthere IS such a thing as too many
piercings...

ME: I daresay.

EMMA: I am TALKING. Ooh, mention my tattoo!

ME: !!!

EMMA: The one Im going to GET. Its
going to be really cool. Its going to be the BAR CODE for a
bag of goldfish crackers, or possibly the bar code for the book
"Atlas Shrugged." Im not sure which one is more
Bad.

ME: Uh...

EMMA: REALLY expensive things, like cars,
dont have bar codes. I dont know if youve
noticed. When Im older, I have some other ideas for tattoos
as well. Like on the middle knuckle of my right hand, I would
like a question mark with FIRE shooting out of it. Get it?

ME: Uh...

EMMA: Its a BURNING QUESTION. And then
maybe... no, not maybe... and then I want to tattoo, on my wrist,
streams of orange and blue coming out of my veins. See?

ME: No.

EMMA: Its symbolic. It means I bleed
orange and blue, for the Mets. Isnt that cool? Wait, THIS
is incredible. I asked all my roommates in Italy to go to a Mets
game with me on my birthday and they said okay? So I went online
to check and make sure there was actually a game that night? And
there is? And its a PROMOTION NIGHT. You know which one?
ITALIAN NIGHT!

EMMA: The LOGO was Futurish. Future-y? Anyway,
I think on Italian Night theyll give out Mets caps with the
letters in Italian letters. You know, the national colors of
Italy. I went to a Mets game this week, I went with Malsta and
Blue Mego [NYU roommates]I finished the year on May 1st
because I was doing the semester in Italy, but they dont
finish here for another weekand the dorm room smelled
really bad. We were watching Dawsons Creek Season 1 Episode
12 The Beauty Contest and we smelled... Oh, you
should mention that thats the best episode EVER, Katie
Holmes does her own singing, which isnt that good, but she
should get credit anyway, and it has the best line ever from a
Dawsons Creek, this is so incredible"Im
sitting next to my best friend, and my palms are sweaty."
Its SO amazing. Anyway, there was a dead mouse.

ME: In Dawsons Creek?

EMMA: No, in the dorm room. Behind the couch.
Apparently it was crushed during the I Still Believe You
Winona Movie Marathon. Thats our theory, anyway.

ME: Winona?

EMMA: She was so totally NOT GUILTY!

ME: Winona Ryder? They had her on tape cutting
out the...

EMMA: Dont be naive. Are we done?

ME: I believe so.

ASK THE
GIBBON EXPERT GUY

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

Is it legal to have a gibbon as a pet? What
about if you had it wear diapers?

(signed)

Thinking about a gibbon for a pet.

DEAR THINKING:

You should check into the laws concerning the
ownership of exotic animals in your area, but in general,
gibbon-owning is frowned upon in the U.S. In my opinion, the
gibbon does not make a good pet. The gibbon does not understand
the function of a diaper and would remove it at the earliest
opportunity.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

Are their any cases of Siamese
gibbonsI mean gibbons that are physically connected, like
so-called Siamese twins? This is not just idle curiosity on my
partI think a well publicized operation separating a pair
of twin gibbons would create a great deal of interest in, and
sympathy for, gibbons in general. Another thing which occurs to
me on this subjectas tragic as most of these unfortunate
twins are when they are connected at the head or abdomen, a pair
of gibbons sharing a single tail might actually be more efficient
in some respectsthey could hang from the same tree branch,
for instance. Your thoughts?

(signed)

Wondering about Siamese gibbons

DEAR WONDERING:

No cases of conjoined gibbons have
been recorded.. Although the term Siamese twins is
now frowned upon, its use by Wondering is not entirely
inappropriate, as the gibbon is indeed native to the part of
Southeast Asia once known as Siam. The problem with two gibbons
sharing a single tail (aside from all the standard problems faced
by conjoined twins): if they were hanging with the tail draped
over the same branch (the only way they could hang, obviously)
they would smack into each other, like a pair of sneakers thrown
over a telephone line, and it would be far less efficient than if
each were hanging from its own discrete tail. Which would also be
impossible, as the gibbon is a tail-less monkey. Thank you for
writing.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

Are their any HERO GIBBONS? We are always
hearing about heroic dogs that rescue children from fires and
such. I would think that gibbons, with their incredibly long arms
and remarkably speed, would be well suited for such rescues.

(signed)

Eager to hear of gibbon heroics

DEAR EAGER:

No examples of gibbon valor are recorded,
perhaps because so few gibbons are in close enough proximity to
people to be of such service. Some, however, have been taught to
roller skate and are quite adept at it.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

I recently saw a show about gibbons on the
Discovery Channel. Much of what I learned from the show seems to
be at odds with what youve said about gibbons in your
column. For instance, in the show we see gibbons carrying their
young in pouches, like kangaroosand it is the male of the
species who does this. The gibbons were hairless (except for the
top of the head). They did have very long arms, just as
youve mentioned, however. I am at a loss as to the
discrepancies between the gibbons we were shown and the gibbons
youve written about. Are they different species of gibbon?
Also, I have always been under the impression that only
marsupials carry their young in pouches. Arent gibbons
primates?

(signed)

Confused

DEAR CONFUSED:

The show you saw was not on the Discovery
Channel; it was an episode of The X-Files. There was
no mention of gibbons. That was not a gibbon, it was the actor
Steve Buscemi. In real life Mr. Buscemi does not have a pouch to
carry his young but if he did, he would indeed be a marsupial.
His very long arms were probably some sort of Hollywood special
effect, but I am not certain because his representative has so
far not returned my calls. Thank you for writing.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

I liked your column better when you were the
EDWARD Gibbon Expert Guy and you would get really mad when people
asked you about the other kind of gibbons and you would swear at
them and everything. But even though your column isnt as
good anymore I think its to your credit that you started
answering questions about the other kind of gibbon.

(signed)

Not interested in either kind of gibbon but
reads your column anyway

DEAR NOT:

Thanks for your support.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

I have invented, if thats the word, a
plastic honey bear jar like the ones you buy honey
in, only mine is shaped like a gibbon (the extra long arms allow
for more storage space). My question is, (a) can I patent this
and (b) what would be an appropriate condiment to keep in a jar
shaped like a gibbon?

(signed)

Ted

DEAR TED:

I dont think you can obtain a patent for
a jar just because it has an unusual shape, but that question is
better addressed to a patent attorney. There are no condiments
appropriate to a jar shaped like a gibbon.

*

DEAR GIBBON EXPERT GUY:

Two quick boxing-related gibbon questions:
First, how much does the average gibbon weigh? I.e., what weight
class would gibbons fight in, if such fights could be sanctioned?
And, COULD such fights be sanctioned? Is there any rule barring
gibbons from competitive boxing? With their enormous reach, they
would have a tremendous advantage.

(signed)

Fan of boxing AND gibbons

*

DEAR FAN:

Gibbons average about 40 pounds, which makes
them tiny even by bantamweight standards. And they are very
short, which probably negates the advantage of that tremendous
reach. They are about the size of human toddlers. I doubt that
any boxing sanctioning body would permit a fight between a gibbon
and a toddler, but who knows. Now that ABC-TV is basically
raffling off babies on 20/20, perhaps THEY might go for it.

THE
PAD

It was usually a waste of time to root around
in the Salvation Army clothing dump in the Acme parking lot. The
clothes rarely fit us, and they always smelled like the parlor in
Picarillos grandmothers house. But today we struck
gold. Someone had discarded a whole bunch of vests.

We poked our heads out of the bin to make sure
the coast was clear and then raced across the parking lot with
our swag. Not only were these vests, of the type worn by George
Raft and Humphrey Bogart in 1930s gangster movies, but they
were moth-eaten vests. We climbed into the World War One tank
memorial in the town park and hunkered down to convince ourselves
that the moth holes were, in fact, something else.

"The guy wearing my vest was tough,"
Calvano said. "You got one hole here, one hole here, another
one under the arm pit, and a couple in the back. He wouldnt
go down. The bullets spun him around like a top but he
wouldnt drop."

"The ones in the back could be exit
wounds," I ventured.

"Theyd be much, much larger,"
he explained. "No, there arent any exit wounds, which
tells us two things: First, they were DUM-DUM bullets, which you
make by notching like an X on the tip of the bullet,
so it blows apart inside the body instead of going right through.
They really wanted this guy dead, no question about it. In
fact..." He sniffed one of the moth holes. "Yeah, I
thought so. Not only were they dum-dum bullets, they were
garlic-tipped dumdum bullets, so even if he survived the
shooting, hed get blood poisoning and die in the hospital.
Its diabolical."

"My vest has nine bullet holes," said
Picarillo.

"Huh. Actually, those look kind of like
moth holes," said Calvano. "Let me see that... yeah,
see how the edges are all uneven? Moth holes."

"B-but... well, the holes in your vest are
all uneven, too..."

"Picarillo, the edges of the holes in my
vest have obviously been cut away, to remove the blood
stains."

"B-but..."

"No question about it, Picarillo. Those
are classic moth holes. An expert could tell you the exact
species of moth. Hey, its still a really sharp vest. Much
nicer than my vest, except for the moth holes..."

I was not about to let Calvano speculate about
the holes in my vest. I had already decided that when I got home
I would use a red magic marker to stain the edges of each hole.
Subtly, of course. Ideally, at some point Picarillo would observe
this and mention it. I would pretend not to have noticed.
"Geez, now that you mention it, it does look like
theres some sort of... reddish stain around these holes...
say, do you suppose it could be..."

This reverie was interrupted by a clank.
Someone was climbing the tank. Two people. "Sshhh,"
said Calvano. We contorted ourselves to look through the
ventilation holes and see who it was, but to no avail. One of the
climbers sat on the metal mesh access panel near the turret,
blocking our view and plunging us into near total darkness.

"Theres some places a man has to go
alone, Jeannine," said a familiar voice. It was
Calvanos older brother, Duff. We all admired Duff, even
though he barely tolerated us. He had long ago moved out of his
bedroom and into the BASEMENT, which he had converted into a PAD.
Sometimes he let us visit the pad, where he would play be-bop
records and say things like "chick" and
"dig." And now he was sitting on top of the World War I
tank memorial, talking to his spooky beatnik girl friend,
Jeannine. The thought that maybe it was Jeannines butt
blotting out the sun made the darkness much more tolerable.
"I mean, one more night in this place, waking up and seeing
my sad pachysandra and the frantic mailbox and the whole mad
Lincoln Ave. scene, and then going to sleep again knowing when I
wake up itll all still be sad and crazy and..."

"Uh-huh," said Jeannine.

We all listened carefully. Perhaps someday we,
too, would have to tell our spooky beatnik girlfriends we were
taking off for a while to play Jack Kerouac. We had no idea that
the whole beatnik thing had been pretty much over for nearly 10
years at that point. Duff told Jeannine she was one frantic
brunette, man. I fingered the bullet holes in my vest and filed
one frantic brunette away for future reference. I
could tell it was a phrase that was bound to come in handy
someday. It seemed to placate Jeannine, anyway.

Duff and Jeannine climbed down and wandered
away. We were in awe of Duff, lighting out for the territory
ahead like that. We got out of the tank to breathe some non-stale
air. "Hey!" said Calvano. "While Duff is gone, we
can USE HIS PAD FOR A CLUB HOUSE!" We broke into a run, our
absurd moth-eaten vests flapping in the wind behind us. I called
dibs on the be-bop records. I hated them, but I knew I was
supposed to think they were cool, so I did.

Calvanos mother was making dinner when we
burst into the kitchen. "Mom!" cried Calvano. "Can
we play in Duffs PAD while hes gone? Huh? Can
we?"

"Oh, you heard?" said his mother.
"Were so proud of him. Imagine that, hes going
to Boys State for two weeks!"

"Huh?? Boys State??"

"Its a GOOD CITIZENSHIP award. The
American Legion selects TWO GOOD BOYS from the high school every
year, and they go to a college campus and meet all the other good
boys and they learn about government and..."

Our heads were in a whirl. Good boys? Award?
American Legion?? DUFF???

"MOM!!" Duff thrust his head out of
the basement doorway. "I TOLE JA not to TELL them!! Doggone
it!!"

"Hey mom, isnt this a good idea? Me
and the guysll send Duff a post card at Boys State
saying how proud we are, and well get JEANNINE to sign it,
too."

"Thats nice," agreed Mrs.
Calvano.

Duff choked. Words seemed to form in his mouth
but could not escape. He motioned us to the basement door.

"All right," he muttered. "You
can hang out in the pad while Im gone. But you dont
say a word about Boys State to Jeannine. Got it?"

"And we get to look at your back issues of
Cavalier," said Calvano. Duff nodded. He actually seemed
relieved at this. Nothing cements a deal like a bribe.

Wed hang out in Duffs pad in our
crappy vests for two weeks, thumbing old magazines and listening
to music we hated. It was sweet.

CAT
BATH

The flea collar didn't work. It had been on for
maybe a week, and the cat was still scratching like crazy. So I
figured, okay, it's a defective collar, and I got another one.
And that one didn't work either. So I got the heavy-duty purple
flea collar. This costs like a buck and a half more than the
regular white flea collar and when you stretch it to activate the
super special flea killing ingredient, you can actually see a
fine white powder form on the surface. And it smells pretty bad,
too. It smells like the old purple Magic Markers from the early
seventies, when science had managed to develop relatively odor
free Magic Markers in every shade of the rainbow except purple,
which smelled like rotten eggs and then some. You would figure
this smell alone would drive the fleas away. But it doesn't. For
all I know, your average flea may not even have olfactory organs.
But your average cat does, and mine was trying to get that flea
collar off its neck. It would slide one paw up inside the collar
and yank. Sometimes the paw would get stuck up there, and then
Nicky the cat would lurch around the room as if it were doing a
bad Jerry Lewis impression. The fleas didn't mind this at all,
since it gave them one less paw to worry about.

And the other cat, Arnold, was downright
delighted by all this. He seemed utterly immune to fleas. When
his younger sibling went into that one-man three-legged race,
Arnold would watch politely for a few minutes and then stroll
nonchalantly into the kitchen and scarf down Nicky's cat food.
All in all, it was an ideal situation for Arnold, for the fleas,
even for me. But Nicky was getting eaten alive.

The flea powder didn't work, either, and then I
got the flea spray, which is so strong it took the rose petals
off the wall paper when the cat figured out what was coming and
ducked just as I hit the button. I finally managed to squirt the
cat, at a considerable cost to the finish on the floors, the
pattern on the rugs, and the entire CBS Thursday night line up,
which was canceled mere seconds after the TV screen caught a
blast of the flea spray. But the fleas didn't care; these were
rough tough mutant fleas, and a look under the microscope would
reveal that they were wearing striped shirts and derbies cocked
at a rakish angle, sporting a three day growth of beard, smoking
stogies, and trimming their fingernails with switchblades. And
what was worse, they had finally begun to colonize Arnold, who
was not happy about the situation at all. He held his brother
personally responsible. Arnold followed every session of
scratching with a spirited attempt to fit Nicky's entire head in
his mouth.

So I got the flea shampoo. If this didn't do
the trick, I was afraid to think what the next step would be. The
flea blow torch, maybe?

Because giving a cat a bath is a two-person
job, I enlisted the aid of my daughter. That was mistake number
one. She thinks the only thing funnier than a soaking wet cat is
a blow-dried cat with its fur all fluffed up like a four legged
chunk of cotton candy. Mistake number two was my decision to
shampoo both cats at once.

This was so stupid I even hesitate to put it
down in cold print, but there it is; most people don't do
anything this stupid once they hit the age of, say, 7. My only
excuse is that perhaps I had ingested so much flea spray and flea
powder that my brain was malfunctioning.

I shut the door of the bathroom. I had cleverly
taken off my sweatshirt and put on an old T-shirt, since I
assumed there would be lots of water being splashed about. This
turned out to be true, of course, but why in heaven's name was I
more concerned about water on my skin than claws in my flesh?

HOW NOT TO GIVE TWO CATS A BATH

STEP ONE: when you fill the tub, make sure you
don't check the water temperature before inserting the first cat.
Because unless the water is exactly cat temperature, the cat will
jump as soon as it hits the water and will cling to the nearest
object into which its claws can find purchase, which will be your
forearm.

STEP TWO: While the cat is swinging from your
forearm by one claw and trying desperately to grab hold with the
other by any means necessary, make sure your daughter is holding
the shower head attachment and THE WATER IS RUNNING. She won't be
able to take her eyes off the blood spurting from your tattered
flesh, and the shower spray will consequently be directed in all
sorts of interesting places, none of which will be the tub.

STEP THREE: Make certain that you have not
removed the top of the shampoo bottle before starting; this will
ensure that you will have to do it with one hand while using the
other hand to keep the cat from ripping up the forearm to which
both the hand and the cat are attached.

STEP FOUR: Also be sure to have the clock radio
in the bathroom tuned to a station that is playing "Lucas
with the Lid Off" so that you not only have swell back
ground music playing, but your daughter can not make out your
increasingly frantic and incoherent instructions, and the
neighbors can not hear your screams as the cat begins to
dismember you in earnest.

STEP FIVE: Forget about the other cat until you
step on it.

STEP SEVEN (you don't want to know about step
six, believe me): be sure to rinse the cat right away; the flea
shampoo only works if you leave it on the cat for about 20
minutes, so if you rinse it right away, you'll have to do the
whole thing all over again, probably before the wounds have fully
closed, and definitely before the cats have forgotten what
happens when you carry them up to the bathroom.

IS
THAT A 176 POUND TUMOR OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME?

Longtime reader David B. of East
Stroudsburg PA forwards an interesting story from Romania, via
the Associated Press. A 46-year-old Romanian woman had extensive
surgery to remove a 176-pound benign tumor from her back. Sans
tumor, the woman weighed 88 pounds. A team of Romanian and
American surgeons operated without a fee. Shes doing well
and appears to be in excellent spirits. My correspondent notes
that the tumor weighed 200% more than the plucky Romanian lady,
and with the rest of us, he wishes her a quick recovery and a
pain free convalescence. And yet...

"What I don't understand is
how somebody lets a tumor grow to 176 pounds before getting
surgery," writes Mr. B. "Do you walk around with a
175-pound tumor on your back and say, Man, this tumor is
getting unsightly and inconvenient. If it grows one more pound,
that's it, I'm going to a doctor? Or did the doctor say,
Hey lady, I've seen much bigger tumors than that. Go home
and take an aspirin. Don't come back until it's at least 176
pounds? Or maybe it didn't bother her until somebody else
mentioned it. Like on a blind date a guy says, Lucica, I
like you. You have a great personality and you're a good dancer
but, well, it's that giant bleeping tumor. It's more than twice
your size and, well, I'd feel like I was dating a tumor with a
girl attached, not the other way around."

Mr. B. asks some good questions
here, although, when you come right down to it, they are all the
same question ("Huh??") which I will endeavor to
answer. Thats what Im here for.

Before we get started, I would
note that the benign isnt the word that I would
use in this case. I understand the difference between benign and
malignant when were talking about growths, but still, once
the thing hits about 20 pounds, benign just
doesnt seem to cut it any more. I think benign
and I think, I dunno, Spencer Tracy in "Boys Town" or
Bill Cosby in one of those hideous sweaters.

Next, I would like to thank Mr.
B. for the generally snotty and exasperated tone of his letter.
As a humor columnista BENIGN humor columnist, thank you
very muchI would be treading on very shaky ground indeed by
getting snarky about a woman who just had a 176-pound tumor
removed. But this way I can quote Mr. B. being snarky as all get
out about it and still maintain my warm and fuzzy imagesort
of like the straight actor playing a gay character on a sitcom
who goes on Leno and says, "and my AGENT sent me a note
reminding me to mention my wife and kids," thus getting a
chuckle at the expense of that unenlightened troglodyte of an
agent, while at the same time following his instructions to the
tee.

Bearing in mind that medicine is
not my main field of expertise, I would have to say that in
general, if something growing on you is bigger than you are, it
might be time to think about seeing the doctor. I suspect that in
the future medical science will call this Grimshaws
Law. Or maybe Grimshaws Second Law, since
Grimshaws First Law would be Never Get in a Checkout Line
at the Supermarket Behind an Old Lady Buying More Than Two Cans
of Cat Food.

What Grimshaws First and
Second Laws have in common is that they would seem to be
self-evident, and yet they are not. The number of times I have
seen someone move into line behind an old lady with a fistful of
expired coupons and a shopping cart crammed with cat food cans is
beyond calculation. Sometimes these people are distracted by cell
phones playing the Theme from Star Wars, or by
toddlers gnawing at their calves, but in general they see an
elderly woman with blue hair right in front of them, piling can
after can of cat food on the conveyer belt, and it just
doesnt register with them that THEY ARE IN DANGER.
Similarly, as the AP story sent by Mr. B. suggests, there are
folks who have something roughly the size of John Goodman growing
between their shoulder blades, and the reaction seems to be,
"Hmm. These shoes totally dont match my purse."
With all due respect, thats the wrong attitude.

Some of you are already reaching
for the crayon to write who does this guy think he is,
telling people how they should react to giant tumors? Where does
HE get off? Youre thinking Im not empathizing
enough with the unfortunate Romanian lady.

You are SO wrong. Not only do I
empathize, I HAVE BEEN THERE.

Not with a giant 176-pound tumor
per se. But I did experience the (in some respects) IDENTICAL or
even WORSE trauma of a slightly receding hairline. I can remember
well the 8 classic stages of coming to grips with my impending
loss: (1) Is there a little more skin up there this morning? (2)
Nah. (3) Well, maybe... (4) Nah. (5) Theres DEFINITELY a
little more... (6) Shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup! (7) IS
THAT MY HAIR IN THE DRAIN?? (8) Lookcows!

So I understand how some
horrible condition can be allowed to progress untreated. I may
not TECHINCALLY be a doctor, but I know a little about the human
heart anyway. I have learned it the hard way. And the human
scalp, too.

In MY case, there was no team of
American and Romanian surgeons offering their services for free.
Unlike Miss
Oh-Im-So-Special-My-Tumor-Is-the-Size-of-a-Buick, I came to
grips with MY affliction without any outside help aside from the
occasional baseball cap. But is the AP doing any stories about
ME? No, they are not. The press is way too busy in Romania. Well,
fine. I dont care. Actually a lot of people think I look
BETTER with the close-cropped-hair-on-the-sides look. If a team
of American and Romanian surgeons DID show up tomorrow and say,
lets do something about that hair loss, you
know what Id tell them? Forget it. Go find another
Romanian woman with a giant tumor. Stick to what you know,
sports. I have other fish to fry. They could BEG me and I
would be unmoved.

They made their choice, now let
them live with it.

A Vocation

Many years ago my friend Chuck became an ordained minister by
responding to an ad in the back of a comic book. It cost him 5
dollars, and he got a certificate suitable for framing and an ID
card for his wallet. The Universal Life Church did not inquire
about his religious beliefs or lack thereof; his check cleared,
and he was in. It doesnt get much more ecumenical than
that.

During the period of Chucks, um,
ministry, we would supplement our pathetic incomes every summer
by leasing a table at the New York City Comic Book Convention
(held over July 4th weekend) and sell our comics. The
other comic book dealers would widen their eyes when Chuck
introduced himself as "the Reverend Mr. Ward."
"Theyre really impressed," he told me. I had
other theories to account for those wide eyes. I was pretty
credulous in my salad days (a few years later I actually paid to
have a star named after me) but I was not so credulous that I
believed Chucks five dollars had actually made him a
minister. "Youre telling me you can do weddings and
stuff?" I said.

"Absolutely," said the Reverend Mr.
Ward. "The ad says so. If it wasnt true, they could
get in a lot of trouble." I suspected that there were a lot
of things advertised in the back of our comic books that might
not have lived up to the promise of the ad copy. Would those
X-ray Specs really allow you to see through girls clothes?
Would the rubber vomit really permit you to Astound Your Friends?
I had my doubts.

And while Im on the subject, why
dont they advertise trusses any more? I think they ONLY
advertised in comic books, but I havent seen an ad for one
in 30 years. Have Americans just stopped rupturing? Are we such
wussies that we no longer do the kind of heavy lifting that leads
to truss-wearing? Or did it finally dawn on the truss companies
that the 12 year old boys who made up the bulk of "The
Legion of Super Heroes" readership probably werent
buying many trusses? Its a mystery.

ANYway... As far as I know, Chuck never
conducted a wedding but it made him happy to believe he could if
he wanted to. Well, happy is probably the wrong word.
Smug is more like it. Still, five bucks to feel smug
doesnt seem like much of a bargain to me, even now. After
all, its not like the comic book dealers ever said,
"Oh yeah? Lets see your OFFICIAL MINISTER CARD."
Not that they had toChuck invariably had the card out as
soon as introductions commenced. He could have told them he was
the Reverend Mr. Ward and kept his five dollars. For that matter,
he could have told them he was Secretary of State Ward or Pope
Chuck XIV or Ambassador Gorlock of the Saturnian Empire. Of
course, he wouldnt have been able to flash the (cough)
official I D card. Flashing that card around was like wearing a
t-shirt with a big "Im with Stupid" logo and an
arrow pointing up at your own face.

In Chucks defense, I have to admit that
he did not pay the additional two dollars that would have made
him a bishop, with the power to ordain his friends. Although that
may have been a matter of under-capitalization. Or he might not
have wanted to share his HUGE TAX ADVANTAGE with his friends. And
what an advantage it was.

The advertisement strongly hinted (but did not
quite state) that once you became a minister you would no longer
have to pay taxes. There was certainly no clerical exemption on
the tax forms we had to fill out at the comic book convention,
but that didnt prevent Chuck from ostentatiously writing
REVEREND in big block letters before his name and listing his
occupation as "minister, Universal Life Church." I like
to think the guys and gals at the IRS got a big charge out of his
tax forms during the days of his ministry. ("Hey, Lou! The
REVEREND MISTER WARD cleared a COOL TWO HUNDRED SMACKEROOS
selling comic books!" "Whoa!! Is that IN ADDITION to
what he made tearing tickets at the movie house??")

What brings all of this to mind now is an
invitation I received via the Internet this week.

"Become a legally ordained minister within
48 hours," it begins. "As a minister, you will be
authorized to perform the rites and ceremonies of the
church!" (It doesnt happen to mention which church
were talking about, but as always I have my theories).
"Perform Weddings, Funerals, Perform Baptisms, Forgiveness
of Sins!" it says, and then the clincher: "Visit
Correctional Facilities!"

Although I was vaguely aware that ministers
visit correctional facilities now and thenyou cant
spend as much time as I have watching old George Raft movies and
NOT be aware of itit never occurred to me that this was a
selling point. It seems to me kind of like recruiting nurses with
EMPTY BED PANS!! SOMETIMES FOR HOURS AT A TIME!" It
just doesnt strike me as a, you know, perk.

On the other hand, I havent clicked on
the link that would take me to the website where I could learn
how to become a minister (or even, says here, "Start My Own
Church!") so its possible that Visit
Correctional Facilities isnt a come on at all. It
might be a case of Truth In Advertising. It could be that, like
the folks who ordained the Reverend Mr. Ward, theyre
offering some interesting tax advantages, and when they say
visit, they mean for, oh, five to ten years.

The Ties That
Blind

When I worked as an usher at the Park Theater,
I wore a clip-on bow tie. Then, I was promoted to assistant
manager and my clip-on bow tie days were at an end. But the
transition to non-clip-on, non-bow ties was not without bumps.

"Let me tell you about that tie,"
said the manager. He was talking about my necktie, which was one
of three neckties I owned. I was 18 years old and these were the
same three ties Id worn to Sunday School. My Sunday School
days had been over for a very long time. "A," said the
manager, "Your tie is telling me way too much about your
diet. Im standing ten feet away from you and your tie says
youre a man who likes his pizza. Theres nothing wrong
with pizza, its a delightful food, but that should be none
of your ties business. B, which is related to A, your tie
has not been to the cleaners for a while. Nobody says you have to
have your ties cleaned every ten minutes, but a good rule of
thumb is, if theres a piece of pepperoni stuck to it, the
time has come."

"Theres no pepperoni stuck to
my..."

"No, theres not. You probably
knocked the pepperoni off when you were tying the tie. Well
get to that interesting knot a little later in the alphabet. I do
seeand remember, Im ten feet awaya small clean
spot in the middle of the splotch of pizza sauce, though, so
Im guess there was, however briefly, a fragment of
pepperoni there at one time. You ARE a pepperoni man, are you
not?"

I said nothing.

"You can make that tie keep its big
mouth shut if you send it to the cleaners more than once a
decade. C, ties need to be hung on a tie rack. If you yank them
off and throw them on a chair or something, they get wrinkled.
AND they tend to pick up things like the little smear of Cheeto
powder down there. Unless that happened while you were eating the
Cheetos. The tie tells much, but it does not tell ALL. D, the
aforementioned knot. Your tie is too wide for a four-in-hand
knot. Its too wide, and its a lousy four-in-hand knot
anyway. Do you know how to tie a Windsor knot? Well, that should
be a priority. But not the top priority, which goes to (E) making
sure the skinny end is both behind the wide end, and shorter than
the wide end. Youve mostly got the behind part,
but if you look carefully, youve notice the skinny end of
the tie is sticking out about three inches. Its not the
style just now. For the moment, just stuff the protruding end
inside your shirt. No, wait." The manager closed the
distance between us, unknotted the tie, deftly retied it. "A
major improvement, although the pizza issues remain unresolved.
You arent wearing a tie tack?"

I shook my head.

"Do you own one?"

"I think... I might..."

"Well, for now, for one night only, allow
me." He removed his own tie tack and used it to stabilize my
tie. "Youre about 80% of the way there. Whereas I lose
perhaps 8% of my own dapperness, but its a sacrifice I make
willinglynay, cheerfully. How deep into the alphabet have
we penetrated?"

"I, uh, dont remember..."

"No matter. The rest of the consonants and
most of the vowels would concern the tie itself, which simply
wont do. You need something with a busier pattern, for one
thing. A solid color like that is going to be trouble until you
resolved the pizza-related issues. I mean, something with little
clocks and checks and that pepperoni residue might have gone
unseen for hours. AND, the material. Im not telling you to
run out and buy a silk tie, but Im not 100% sure that thing
is even CLOTH, technically. It feels sort of like Saran
Wrap."

"I appreciate all this," I said.
"Im learning a lot about ties here."

"De nada. Its what Im here
for."

"I would appreciate it more if I
werent learning it right in front of the candy girls,
though," The candy girls, who had been avidly watching all
this, now focused their attention on assorted napkin holders,
Milk Dud boxes, and fingernails.

"Hey, theyre learning too. In any
event, later tonight we will make our first night deposit of the
days receipts, and that definitely requires a snappy neck
tie, but for the nonce I will be straightening up the mens
room and you will be checking the ladies room, two activities for
which neckties are strictly optional, since the locales are on
the grungy side. I recommend we de-tie before we commence, and
then re-tie afterwards." He undid his necktie and draped it
on a hanger in the back of the ticket booth. I did likewise. We
also left our jackets in the booth.

I finished checking the grungy ladies room long
before the manager finished in the mens room, even though I
had to change the toilet paper and clean up the sinks. I went to
retrieve my tie, which was right where Id left it. The
managers tie was there as well, although his tie had been
snipped neatly in half.

"Chucks tie!" I said.
"Its chopped up!"

"We dont know a thing about
that," said one of the candy girls, admiring the sheen on
her thumbnail.

"But we do know he was acting like a big
jerk. Ooh, my tie is so cool, and everybody elses tie
is like, stink city."

"That is SO exactly what he was
saying," said the other candy girl.

"Hes gonna think I ruined his
tie!" I said.

"Well, hes gonna be WRONG,"
said a candy girl.

"Whoa, like THERES something new
under the sun," said the other. "Gawd, he needs to
lighten UP."

"Quickgimme the scissors. I gotta
cut my tie in half so it looks like, uh..."

Like what? Like a serial tie-mutilator was
loose in the theater? I was unable to finish the sentence
coherently in 1974, and thirty years on Im still unable to
finish the sentence coherently. "Just gimme the
scissors!"

The candy girls were amused by my panic and did
another minute and a half of scissors? what scissors
before handing them over, which why I was still struggling to
sever the bottom of my tie when Chuck walked into the lobby. It
may have been a crappy tie, but it was TOUGH.

In this manner did my brief career as assistant
manager of the Park Theater conclude.

The Mulberry Street Relief Station

I unwrapped the loaf, sliced it in half, and
triumphantly displayed the spongy core of the bread. Kelly green.
Mulberry Street Joey Clams nodded.

"Well, I gotta admit, you were right. Does
it taste green?"

"Nah," I said. "Its just
food coloring. It tastes like regular bread." I hand him the
bread knife. For some reason, perhaps because the loaf was round,
he carved a wedge out of it rather than a slice.

We were indulging in Mancusos Kelly green
Irish soda bread to get in the mood for the St. Patricks
Day parade, which was commencing uptown in roughly an hour. We
had already stapled a variety of cardboard leprechauns and
shamrocks around the Custom Neon Sign Shop, and cleaned and
disinfected the bathroom. The clean bathroom was at the very
heart of our St. Patricks Day plan.

Last year we had gone to watch the parade and
learned several important lessons. Lesson one: the huge
Bullwinkle balloon is not a part of the St. Patricks Day
parade, not ever, only the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade. I
was pretty sure of this before we even got there, but we were
unable to confirm it without asking somebody, and its just
not possible for a grown man to ask a total stranger,
"Excuse me, but what time is the Bullwinkle balloon pass
by?" Lesson two: there are an awful lot of parade watchers
who are quenching their thirsts with perhaps more beer than is
wise, especially since (lesson three) there is an astounding
shortage of public bathrooms in the city of New York. Some of the
bitterness that Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I felt because the
Bullwinkle balloon was out of action had been mitigated by the
sight of all those people, many of them young, many even less
articulate than usual, begging restaurants and movie theaters to
let them in to use the bathrooms. A large percentage of the
people in need of a bathroom were cute Irish girls. Despite this,
the managers of the restaurants and theaters were united in their
lack of sympathy. "Begorra," many of them said,
"And would you mot be readin our Rest rooms for
customers only sign?"

"You know..." said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams, "I sense an opportunity to perform a public
service here."

"You mean tell them about the rest rooms
at Grand Central Station?" Which named edifice was all of
three minutes from where dozens of parade-goers were in various
stages of bladder-induced agony.

"Something like that," said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. "Only I was thinking of a way to perform
a public service, earn the eternal respect of various cute drunk
Irish chicks, AND make a little bit of money as well."

"????" I said.

"Maps," he answered. "Maps with
the locations of all the public bathrooms we can think of. 364
days a year, such a map would be worth exactly nothing. But on
St. Patricks Day..." He paused dramatically. "The
SKY is the limit!"

"Well," I pointed out, "I think
the limit is probably a lot less than the sky. Probably its
about half the price of a movie ticket, since they can buy one of
those, use the bathroom, and then see a movie, too."

Thats excellent thinking. The problem
with it is, our customers are all by definition not thinking too
excellently. Our customers are by definition both two and a half
sheets to the wind PLUS they have just discovered that their
bladders are about 80% smaller than they thought."

"Good point, Mulberry Street Joey Clams.
But by the time we get the maps made, these people wont be
needing them any more."

"True. It is too late for this years
crop of cute drunk Irish chicks. But NEXT YEAR, we will be
ready."

When we got back to the Custom Neon Sign Shop
we made some preliminary notes towards the list which, a year
hence, would make our fortune, but suddenly a dark cloud passed
over the features of Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "You
know... once we sell a few maps... whats to prevent people
from... sharing them?"

"Whoa," I said.

"I mean, obviously, if somebody showed the
map to somebody else who, you know, hadnt PAID for the
information, we would have grounds to sue..."

"Obviously..."

"But that would probably mean going to
COURT."

"Probably."

"We gotta think of something else."

And so was born the MULBERRY STREET RELIEF
STATION. Which was the bathroom of the Custom Neon Sign Shop. The
plan was simplicity itself: We would indeed distribute maps to
cute drunk Irish chicks up and down the parade route, as planned,
but the maps themselves would be free. And the maps would provide
directions only to the Mulberry Street Relief Station, admission
$1. Perhaps a discount for really cute drunk Irish girls. We
printed up 500 maps.

"Hey, that stuff you put in the toilet
tank turned the water blue. I like it."

"Very festive," I agreed.

"But you know what Im thinking?
Wouldnt it be more festive if it was green? And more Irish,
too. Like the bread. Do they have stuff that turns the water
green?"

"Yeeee-ah," I said. "But, uh,
no."

We went uptown to watch the Bullwinkle-less
parade and passed out our maps to likely looking prospects. After
about 10 minutes Mulberry Street Joey Clams decided it would be
more business like to give some Irish teenagers 5 bucks to pass
them out while we raced back to the Custom Neon Sign Shop and
waited for the cute drunk Irish chicks to start lining up.

After about two hours it was apparent that
something had gone terribly wrong. No cute drunk Irish chicks
appeared at our door. Nobody appeared at our door.

We were never quite sure what happened. Maybe
the kids we hired had passed the maps out to the wrong people, or
had not passed them out at all; maybe all the cute drunk Irish
girls had gotten lost on the way (certainly possible, since the
subway trip from midtown to the Neon Sign Shop required them to
change trains twice and then hike four blocks through Little
Italy).

We ate green bread and moped. "Hey,"
said Mulberry Street Joey Clams, "Maybe we could make a deal
with Mancusos. What about if next year we give away a loaf
of green bread with every trip to the relief station? I mean,
theyd actually have to SHOW UP here to get the bread, you
know?"

"Its a thought," I said.

FINDING MY VOICE

The fun was gone. Once upon a time there was no
greater delight in my life than getting a call from a
telemarketer. I had developed an amazing array of character
voices and no telemarketer could disengage from a conversation
with me before hearing at least three of them. The Deaf Old
Yiddish Waiter, The Teenage Dork With a Speech Impediment, a
whole slew of people with different regional accents but
identical (and very severe) cases of Torettes Syndrome... ah,
those were the days. The Teenage Dork once kept a real estate
salesman on the line for seven minutes asking about acne medicine
("Im too young to buy condos, but I need something for
these ZITS!"). I didnt know it at the time, but it was
a golden age.

Then, a few years ago, I realized that a moment
of dead air when I answered the phone meant the caller was
actually a telemarketer, and I would hang up the phone before the
conversation even began. I had a lot more free time, but
something important evaporated from my life. In recent months I
would wait for the pause to end and the telemarketer to say,
"Hello, Mr. Greenstraw?" and I had every intention of
answering with (for instance) "Dey Ess No Juan Har Wid Dot
Nam. Wid dju lak to spreak to Missus Yamagucci?" But I never
did. Too much time had passed. I contented myself with making
moose ears at the receiver and hanging up. I could no
more invoke the Deaf Old Yiddish Waiter after a hiatus of three
or four years than I could walk onto my high school football
field, lace up the cleats, and run a post pattern.

Well, if you want to get technical, I
couldnt lace up the cleats and run a post pattern when I
was in high school either, at least not without colliding with
the other receiver, who was running the CORRECT pattern. But you
know what I mean.

Incidentally, the other receiver, Dave
Stradler, was a total dipwad even if he did run the correct
pattern.

Anyway, I had just about given up all hope of
experiencing the joy of responding to an unwanted phone call when
I was cleaning up behind the couch and found my daughters
old VOICE MODIFIER, which had gone missing around 1998. It looks
like a blue bullhorn, but it has three voice
settingsRobot, Alien, and Kid. Robot and Alien sound like
youd expect a robot or an alien to sound, more or less, but
Kid sounds like Alien, only an octave or so higher. (This is not
a complaint).

I replaced the long-depleted battery and was
sitting on the couch, watching "Inside the Actors
Studio" and saying rude things to James Lipton in a robot
voice when the phone rang. I put the receiver to my ear, and I
heard the familiar sound of nothingof dead airof a
telemarketer. And the Voice Modifier was in my hand.

"May I speak with Jeffrey Greenshaw,
please?"

"YOU HAVE ACCESSED A FORBIDDEN AREA,"
said the robot voice. "YOU MUST HANG UP AT ONCE!"

"Huh??"

HANG UP AT ONCE OR WE WILL BEGIN THE
DESTRUCT SEQUENCE! TEN! NINE"

He hung up. I clicked off the robot voice and
took a deep breath. I felt a warmth spreading from the center of
my being to the extremest extremities. The old feeling was back.
I was back. I felt the way I imagine Billy Crystal felt after
hosting the Oscar show following a four year lay off.

When the phone rang again some hours later, I
didnt wait for the telemaketer to begin his sales pitch; as
soon as the dead air gave way to the unmistakable sound of a PBX
room, the Alien Voice announced:

"WE ARE TRACING THIS CALL. DO NOT HANG UP.
YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 4-34-B OF FCC REGULATIONS. WE
HAVE NOT YET COMPLETED THE TRACE. AS SOON AS THE TRACE IS
COMPLETE, WE WILL DISPATCH POLICE OFFICERS TO YOUR LOCATION TO
PLACE YOU UNDER ARREST. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR LOCATION. DO NOT HANG
UP!"

My caller hung up. I was on a roll. I was
averaging two or three telemarketing calls a day, so I expected
to continue improving as I got more practice. By the end of the
week, with another 10 or 15 interactions under my belt, I figured
I would be at the top of my form.

Then some odd things occurred. Instead of
getting two or three calls a day from telemarketers, I was
receiving 6 or 8, then more than a dozen. I just didnt have
the stamina to engage each of them with a state-of-the-art robot
voice performance. I mean, Im good, but even Mozarts
energy levels probably dropped off a bit after the tenth piano
concerto of the day. In addition, I would get some unusual calls
from NON-telemarketers. The phone would ring, Id pick up,
there would be no dead air, so Id say, "Hello?"

"Uh... hello?"

"Hello?"

"Um... uh.. Sorry. Wrong number..."

Everybody gets calls like that from time to
time, but four or five a day? And all from different callers? The
conversation generally ended at "wrong number...", but
finally I managed to keep one caller on long enough to ask:

"Well, who did you want to speak to?"

"The, uh... the recording that says your
phonell blow up if you hang up. My girl friend said it was
this number."

"Ah."

As far as I can determine, every telemarketer
who heard my robot voice gave my phone number to everybody in his
or her address book including, of course, other telemarketers.
Several of my * ahem * performances were recorded and have been
posted on line, some of them with added musical backing tracks.

Aside from the fact that I dont get any
credit or money, its the most successful work of my entire
career.

That being the case I decided to go out at the
top. I retired the Voice Modifier. Now I just hang up on
telemarketers. It doesnt matter. The calls continue, more
and more of them each day. Sometimes I shout, "I dont
do the robot any more!" before I hang up. I dont
expect it to stop over night.

Thats how it goes when youre the
best. When Garbo retired, they begged her to come back for
DECADES.

NOSTRIL
GROOMING

Calling all guys! I know you dont want to
hear this, but I need to say a word about your noses. Not the
entire nose, just the part you keep forgetting to prune.
Thats right, I mean you, and you, and especially YOU.

Nobody likes to think about the inside of his
nose. If everything is working right it doesnt occur to us
to think about it, and when everything isnt working right,
we dont dare think about it. But the fact is, its a
jungle in there. And once that jungle starts encroaching on the
your upper lip, it doesnt matter whether youre
thinking about it or not. Trust meeverybody who encounters
you is thinking about it. In fact, they cant think about
anything else, especially if they happen to be of the female
persuasion.

You might be telling yourself, "Hey, if a
chick is going to pass me by because of something like a little
NOSE HAIR, so be it. That just means we are talking about a
SHALLOW CHICK." Right you are. And you know what? Shallow
chicks are the way to go. The shallower the better. Lets
face it: even if you meet a DEEP chick whos willing to
overlook those twin rain forests poking out of good ol Mr.
Honker as long as you REALLY TOTALLY GET "Le Sacre d
Primtemps," youre STILL out of luck, because you
dont even know what I just said, do you?

Hey dude maybe it was "cool" to
bop around the mall in 1998 with a crop of nose hair so luxurious
it looked like you had a tarantula crammed into each nostril,
but... Times Have Changed. Todays cutting edge nostril is
lean, mean, and exceedingly UNgreen. But what can you do about
it? Take it from One Who Knowstheres nothing sadder
than a guy standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair
of tweezers, defoliating the nasal jungle one branch at a time.
It takes so long that by the time youve got nostril number
two under control, nostril number one is already overgrown again
and youve got to start the whole thing over. Anyway, you
are a GUY, and guys need MACHINES. Note the plural, because this
is a multi-part job requiring a highly specialized,
state-of-the-art, easily broken tool for each part.

STEP ONE: PREPARATION. You wouldnt
consider shaving without first scrubbing the face with a foaming
cleanser, exfoliating, rewetting the whiskers with a damp wash
cloth, applying a pre-shave oil, and brushing on an emollient,
would you? I didnt think so. Well, your nose hair is just
as something or other as your facial hair. First: Clear the
channels of all foreign matter. Take you time. Most of this will
be disposable, but every now and then a rare misprinted postage
stamp or a collectable Fisher-Price toy will show up among your
tangled follicles, so it pays to put everything carefully aside
until youre finished and you can separate the junk from the
stuff youll be putting up on eBay.

STEP TWO: MORE PREPARATION. Now that the debris
has been carted away, a brisk vacuuming, followed by a thorough
hose-down. There are some clever devices on the market which are
capable of fulfilling both functions, but I tend to be a purist
here, and for the first task I go with the traditional NASAL-VAC
MAC VII. You want to be careful about the power setting
anything above "4" (it goes up to "27") and
you could be trying to retrieve your medulla oblongata from the
filter. For the wet work, your undersigned is totally sold on the
pithily named NOSE HOSE, which can pump 20 gallons a second when
its revved up all the way. You probably wont require
that much water to get things spic-n-span in there, but its
nice to know that ya got it if ya need it.

STEP THREE: A LEETLE BIT MORE PREPARATION. If
you could turn your nose inside out, you could take care of that
unsightly hair simply by shaving it off. But then youd have
the problem of turning the nose outside in again, and what if it
didnt work? Youd be walking around with this inside
out nose, and probably talking lige you heb a terribu code.
"Doe," youd be explaining all the time, "I
dode hab a code, by DOSE is IDSIDE OUD!" So dont even
consider it. Where was I going with this?

STEP THREE: A LEETLE BIT MORE PREPARATION: Oh
yeah. So, you cant turn your nose inside out (and if you
can, please dont tell me about. Write to Betty Orleman).
Yet the next step is precisely what you would do if you could:
lather up those bristles. The Nose Hose can be easily modified
into a foam delivery system. Just fire away. Twice. And once the
foam has been applied, you can sit back and relax a bit while the
foam gets to work softening up the stalks. Because nose growth is
considerably tougher and denser than the stuff on your chin, it
needs to sit a bit longer to be effective. 30-45 minutes will
usually do the trick.

STEP FOUR: CHOP CHOP! Now its time to
fire up the Weed Whacker, put on your miners helmet, and
get to work in there. How ruthless should you be? Think Peter
OToole flipping out in "Lawrence of Arabia": TAKE
NO PRISONERS! TAKE NO PRISONERS!

STEP FIVE: Cauterize. Youve been
relentless and everything has been sliced down. But if you
dont want it poking out again by dessert, youve got
to burn it right to the ground. Ends of every follicle must be
seared. Once again, there are a number of excellent nose torches
that will get the job done, but be careful: after all, you are
basically sticking a tiny blowtorch up your nose and things could
go wrong. What to do? The safest, most humane thing to do is
practice first on somebody elses nose. Preferably somebody
you dont like, and who isnt that bright. Once you can
incinerate your buddys nose thatch without having the
neighbors banging on the door and screaming, "What are you
doing in there, Mr. Greenstraw?? Whos screaming like that??
Im calling the police!!"  well, then its
safe to take care of your own nostrils.

STEP SIX: SEAL IT. Now the whole nasal interior
needs to be sealed, in order to retard regrowth. Sand it. Spackle
it. Two coats of primer. A good latex-based indoor / outdoor
paint. And hey, dont be afraid to go with a different color
for each nostril! Then apply three coats of polyurethane, making
sure to allow each one to dry completely before applying the
next. Yes, all this is a lot of work, but unless your nasal
passages are extremely fertile, you shouldnt have to bother
with it more than once or twice a week.

MAINTAINENCE: But how do you keep everything
hunky dory between grooming sessions? You might think about
installing a bug zapper. The babes dont want to see the
Forest That Time Forgot when they look at you, but I doubt that
anyone can resist that soft purple glow spilling out of one or
both nostrils, punctuated every now and then by a reassuring
fffzzzt! to let you both know that All Is Well in the olfactory
channels.

FROM THE
MAILBAG

Last year we reached a milestone when your
undersigned received, for the first time, more email regarding
this column than snail mail; this year that trend intensified.
Only two readers made contact with me via the U.S. mail. Geez.
Virtually the whole world is now part of a vast cyber-village.
Or, alternatively, only two people on Planet Earth think the
column is worth blowing 37 cents on.

The epistical year began promisingly enough
with a postcard from S. K. of Reigelsville PA, who wrote
regarding last years "from the Mailbag" column.
"Thought I would drop you a line," said she,
"since you seem to enjoy hearing from yr readers." That
is the entire text of her postcard. Pithiness, thy initials are
S. K. In a way it reminds me of the letters I used to send my
parents from summer camp, which generally went: "Dear Mom
& Dad, they are making us write home today, Love, Jeff."
But S. K. just wrote out of the goodness of her heart; I was
being threatened with latrine duty.

R.R. of Easton PA sent a polite email
questioning my grammar. "You say so-and-so gave
such-and-such to Picarillo and me," he wrote. "It
should be Picarillo and I. Im surprised your
editor didnt fix it." I wrote a polite note explaining
that my editor didnt fix it because its quite
correct. He responded politely that his 8th grade
English teacher said "you and me" is ALWAYS incorrect,
and she knew her beans. I politely explained that his 8th
grade English teacher may have known her beans but she was a tad
shaky in the grammar department. He politely replied that I
should be a man and just admit I made a mistake. I politely
admitted that I have made a great many mistakes, but that this
did not happen to be one of them, and cited Fowlers
articles on "me," "between," and
"I" from the indispensable Modern English
Usage. He politely suggested some interesting recreational
activities for me and the horse I rode in on. And, not having a
horse, there we let the matter drop.

Not to bore you with technical matters, but: to
see whether you should use "Picarillo and I" or
"Picarillo and me" in a given sentence, just remove the
Picarillo. In general its always a good idea to
remove the Picarillo. You dont want to be in a sentence
with Picarillo if you can help it. Trust me, you just DONT.

As always, there were a number of suggestions
for Expert Guy columns. Douglas H. of Phillipsburg
thought I might be able to get some mileage out of
expensive sneakers. M. E. (of parts unknown) felt
pizza toppings would provide plenty of mirth. And H.
J. of Alexandria said that he had several ideas for
excellent columns but wanted to know if I would give him credit.
Ah, H.J., my man, my main man, (I replied), just remember: there
is NO LIMIT to what you can accomplish if you dont care who
gets the credit. Alas, H. J. did not write back so I dont
know whether he took this excellent advice to heart.

Other subjects brought to my attention by
readers eager for my take on them: Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy, "P. Diddy running the Marathon," and
(deep breath here) "the current political scene." In a
sort-of related vein, Joe P. of West Paterson, New Jersey, asked
whatever happened to the Old Duffer at the End of the
Bar columns that I used to do from time to time. The
"Old Duffer" was how I generally tackled topical stuff
like QE and "the current political scene," but, said I,
I felt that I had run the concept into the ground and there was
nothing more I could do with it. "Hate to break it to
you," said he, "but youve run all of your
concepts into the ground & theres nothing more you can
do with any of them." Well, I have long suspected as much.
Its good to finally know for sure. Thank you, Joe, thank
you very much.

No fewer than THREE local bands wrote asking to
be mentioned in my column. Lets seehow can I phrase
this? I cant just drop your names into the middle of a
column. Theres a principle involved. If you want to be
mentioned in the paper, you have to do something noteworthy. For
instance, send me money. Fifty bucks gets you two full
paragraphs. A hundred bucks, and you get to be Calvano and
Picarillos favorite band.

The most email was generated by a column I
didnt writemy daughters pinch hit
while I was recovering from appendicitis. "Your column is
way better when you dont have anything to do with it,"
said K. N. of Milford. "You should give her a shot every
year." I would love to, but Im afraid I cant
spare any more internal organs just now. D. F. of Holland asks if
the periodic interviews with my daughter are accurately
transcribed or if Im just making it all up or what. Me?
Make things up? Never. And if you (this you is plural
and refers not just to D.F. but to anyone reading this) would
like to confirm that, you could write to my daughter, who (as
reported in the last interview I did with her) is spending the
spring semester in Florence. The address is: Emma Grimshaw //
Villa Natalia // Via Bolognese 106 // 501 39 Florence Italy. Me
and her is always up for fan letters.

LAST RITES FOR
PETER LORRE

I picked up the phone. "Peter Lorres
dead," Calvano said.

"Yuh," I said. "In like 1963.
No, 64. I remember because it was the main story in Famous
Monsters of Filmland number 16."

"The cover had, um, um..."

"Frankenstein Meets the
Wolfman."

"Yeah! But inside they APOLOGIZED for not
having Peter Lorre on the cover. They said the cover was already
at the printers when he died."

"I never held it against them."

"Me neither. But I mean the OTHER Peter
Lorre is dead now."

The other Peter Lorre was Calvanos
goldfish. The details: Peter Lorre had been fine when Calvano had
turned off the light on his nightstand (which had a picture of
Peter Lorre (the one without gills) scotch taped to the
lampshade). But come the dawn, the unfortunate gold fish was
floating on the surface of his bowl.

"So you want me to come over for the Big
Flush?"

"Well, come over, but Im not
flushing him. Peter Lorre was a GREAT gold fish. Full honors in
the backyard."

"Okay."

In Calvanos backyard, there was a spot
behind the forsythia which, unbeknownst to his parents, was the
final resting place for many of his beloved but short-lived pet
chameleons, turtles (the dinky ones you could buy at the pet
store for 48 cents, which had a life expectancy of about 45
minutes), and crawfish. The departed would be placed into a
matchbox with due ceremony, the matchbox would be closed, and
then it would be buried, although not too deeply, since we liked
to check on them from time to time. One of the chameleons had
been wrapped in a white shoelace (actually a sneaker lace, since
they were longer) in the hope that this would permit the
chameleon to mummify rather than get all gross. It turned out to
be a vain hope, even though we changed the shoelace at least
three times during the 5 days when we were checking regularly.

Calvano was already in the backyard when I got
there, and to my surprise, Peter Lorre was still in his fishbowl,
floating on the surface above the crappy little plastic castle
which must have provided him so much comfort and entertainment
during his stay with the Calvanos.

"Grounds kind of hard," said
Calvano. I nodded. Calvano had bent the end of a trowel
establishing just how hard the ground was. Just about as hard as
you might expect, given that it was the middle of February and
temperatures had been in the low teens for about 8 weeks.

"So were going to do the Big Flush
after all?"

"Nuh," said Calvano. "I wanna
show you something in the fridge first. I got an idea."

We left Peter Lorre floating behind the
forsythia. If someone had wandered into Calvanos yard and
seen a goldfish bowl rimed with frost, this person might have
thought it was strange, but surely he would have thought it no
stranger than what Calvano showed me in the refrigerator.

"What IS that?" I said.

"It was a recipe from a booklet my mom
sent for. There was a coupon in the Jell-O box."

What I was looking at was Jell-O, all right.
But it was not just Jell-O. First of all, it was shaped like a...
well, like a small dome atop a slightly larger dome, atop an even
larger dome. Three stories of Jell-O. And inside the Jell-O...

"I think its radishes," said
Calvano. I peered more closely. It was indeed radishes. Mostly.
There were also crescents of celery. It was some sort of Jell-O
SALAD.

"Is your mother crazy?" I said.

"I dunno," Calvano said, dreamily.

"Is she gonna make you EAT that?"

"She might try," he conceded.
"Theres another recipe with little cauliflowers in
it."

I shuddered. "Well, what do you want to do
with Peter Lorre?"

"Youre looking at it," he said.
"I was sort of thinking about just leaving him outside in
the bowl, and hed end up inside a block of ice? But this is
better." He picked up a package of Jell-O and read the
instructions on the back. "Yeah, we can do this. The trick
is to add Peter Lorre at the right time not too soon or
hell float to the top and end up stuck on the
outside."

"Yeah, we wouldnt want that."

"Well, we got a choice of Strawberry,
Lime, or Orange."

"Orange might be the best," I said.
"Hed kind of blend in."

"We should also add some STUFF," said
Calvano. "Not necessarily chopped up vegetables..."

"No..."

"...Peter Lorre wouldnt like that.
But maybe... you know, like the skull head eraser on the end of
my SPECIAL pencil? Things like that. Things Peter Lorre would
kind of enjoy..." He paused and turned away, as if
contemplating something outside in the yard. I think he was
getting a little choked up and didnt want me to see.
"Rubber spiders," he continued, when hed gotten
control of himself. "And then in the spring, well bury
the whole thing, the way hed want it."

We boiled some water, as per the instructions.
Well, not exactly according to instructionsCalvano, not
wanting to get in trouble for using one of his mothers good
bowls, used an empty tomato sauce jar. "Now we add the
powder. Okay. Now this is the tough part. We gotta add either ice
cubes or really cold water and then we put it in the fridge and
let it gel. Then when its around halfway there, we add
Peter Lorre."

It was an instruction that stuck with me for
decades. When the Jell-O is halfway there, add Peter Lorre.

We decided the water in the fish bowl was
probably colder by now than anything we could get out of the tap.
The fact that it was, you know, goldfish bowl water and would
render the whole thing inedible wasnt a factor, since
nobody was ever going to eat it. I retrieved the bowl from the
back yard. We set Peter Lorre aside, added the cold water, put
everything in the fridge and frantically ran around the house
looking for things to accompany Peter Lorre on his journey into
an orange-flavored afterlife. Mostly rubber bugs, of which there
was no shortage in the Calvano household.

"Aw, we got too many. These would fill the
jar like six times over," said Calvano. "Just use half
of them."

We were dropping the bugs into the Jell-O
(which was nowhere near halfway there) when we were interrupted
by Mrs. Calvanos scream. It was a multi-part scream. Part
one was because of the bugs we were adding to the Jell-O. Part
two, about an octave higher, occurred when she caught sight of
the recently departed fish on the kitchen counter.

"Ma," Calvano said, "Its
what PETER LORRE WOULD HAVE WANTED!"

Calvano had never bothered to tell his mother
that hed named the goldfish Peter Lorre. She
stopped screaming and stared at her son as if he were insane.
"Have you lost your mind?" she said. With uncommon
restraint, Calvano did not bring up the radishes suspended in
lime Jell-O.

We rinsed out the tomato sauce jar and
recovered the rubber spiders. Later that day Peter Lorre was
given the Big Flush. We got in trouble for locking the bathroom
door. "Nobody uses the bathroom for half an hour,"
Calvano yelled to his brother, frantically pounding to get in.
"Lets see a little RESPECT for the dead, huh?"

WOO
HOO!

Here we are, more than 10 days after the
Wardrobe Malfunction That Shook the World. You would think that
there would nothing more to say about Janet Jackson at this
point, or anyway nothing that hasnt already been said
better by the fat lady behind you in the checkout line at
WalMart.

I certainly never thought I would have anything
original to add to Sargasso Sea of post Super Bowl breast
commentary. And yet, after reading dozens of pundits and listened
to hundreds more, I found my viewpoint was not represented
anywhere. There were two basic positions: (1) The culture is
going to Hell in a handbasket and this incident is just further
evidence, or (2) Oh, get over it, its just a breast,
in other, more civilized countries, theyre much more
sophisticated about such things.

Now, these are both perfectly respectable
positions; in fact, my own position embraces aspects of them
both. It is (3) WOO HOO! BOOBS! But apparently nobody shares my
point of view here.

Well, I shouldnt say "nobody."
No sooner had Mr. Timberlake established once and for all that
Miss Jackson is, indeed, a mammal, than my phone rang. It was a
Distinguished Journalist; in fact, a great many of my friends
happen to be Distinguished Journalists. We naturally gravitate
towards one another, like fat bald guys at singles mixers.

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Whoa! Dude! Did you
see that??

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST [me]: Her boob!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Her BOOB!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I cant
believe we saw her boob!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: On regular TV!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Yeah! It was
FREE!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Her BOOB!

Having now determined what it was we had seen,
and gotten corroboration, we set about reviewing what we knew of
what we journalists call Deep Background.

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I thought it would be
bigger. Didnt you think it would be bigger? I mean, that
things shes wearing kind of pushes it up...

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Yeah...

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: But didnt you
think it was bigger?

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: No, its
about what I thought. And

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Hey! The boob is
posted on Drudge!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: God I LOVE the
Internet. Hey, whats that THING on it?

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: It looks kind of like
a hubcap.

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I think it
looks like a ninja star.

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Kind of. I dont
like it.

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: No. It
obscures, uh...

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: It INTERFERES with
our seeing the COMPLETE BOOB!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: EXACTLY! Hey,
do you think theres one on the OTHER BOOB??

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I dunno. Can you buy
just ONE of those things?

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I dunno. What
is it?

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: I dunno.

This phase of the investigation had reached an
impasse. We were forced into other lines of inquiry.

(If I may be permitted a brief digression: both
the Distinguished Journalist and the Other Distinguished
Journalist are well over 40. When they started calling each other
"dude" a couple of years ago it was ironic and funny.
Now its just kind of pathetic (Sort of like that
edgy bump-and-grind, pelvic thrust Super Bowl half
time choreography. Geez, it gave off a whiff of stale cheese 35
years ago when Bob Fosse was pumping it out, and he was actually
GOOD). Anyway, now that Distinguished Journalists of a Certain
Age are now calling each other "dude," its time
to say goodbye to "dude." Hip young dudes need a new
tag. Maybe "Chum.")

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Do you think
its real?

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Do you mean
natural, or do you mean actually
existing?

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Natural. What do you
mean, actually existing? As opposed to what?

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Digital.

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Digital boobs? Can
they do that??

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Of COURSE they
can do that!! They can do ANYTHING!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Well of course
its not DIGITAL. There were 100,000 people there!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Unless of
course they were all digital...

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Dude! Focus! Boobs!

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Boobs!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Real or fake?

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Fake.

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Agreed. But
theyre still...

OTHER DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Boobs!

DISTINGUISHED JOURNALIST: Boobs!

I hope you were paying attention to that
exchange about digital boobs. The Other Distinguished Journalist
is quite correct: digital boobs are well within the range of
current technology, and in fact, they have been for years. There
is no reason at all why the digital Hooterization of America can
not now proceed at a rapid pace.

You may recall, about 20 years ago, the
"colorization" flap. Ted Turner was taking old black
and white movies and, through digital magic, turning them into
old COLOR movies. Like all visionaries, he was attacked. Some
accused him of defacing masterpieces, as if he were slapping a
disco rhythm track on Beethovens Fifth Symphony. Also the
colors happened to be crappy. Except for a pretty decent deep
blue, the colors were washed out, like a magazine cover
thats been left in the display window too long.

The technology just wasnt up to the task.
But now it is. Only we dont need a full color (for
instance) "Its a Wonderful Life." We need a
HOOTERIZED "Its a Wonderful Life." Like many old
movies, its got a great script, great acting, great
everything... but NO BOOBS. Now we can digitally fix this. The
fact is, there is no movie, no matter how good, that
wouldnt be immensely improved by hooterization.

We can start out tentatively, with the odd boob
here and there, among the residents of Bedford Falls; eventually,
everybody can be digitally enhanced. Even Mr. Potter. As the
events of Superbowl Sunday showed, it doesnt really matter
if the emergence of this or that particular boob makes dramatic
"sense." As long as its a boob, and its out
there, thats enough.

I got up early to watch the announcement of the
76th Annual Academy Award nominations. Its
always exciting, but this year especially so, since I was
actually rooting for a movie, for the first time since 1986. And
just as in 1986, when "Pee Wees Big Adventure"
did not make the final cut for Best Picture, I was bitterly
disappointed. "Santo y Blue Demon Contra El Dr.
Frankenstein" was not nominated for ANYTHING.

I was given a DVD of the film as a belated
birthday gift, part of a box set of Santo movies. I had never
even heard of Santo before, but it was obvious 15 seconds into
the first scene that I was watching the greatest movie ever made.

A young woman is walking down a dark street.
Its very late and she is so nervous that she looks into the
camera 5 times in less than 20 seconds. And her nervousness is
not without foundation, because SUDDENLY SHE IS KIDNAPPED BY A
HUGE GUY IN J.C. PENNY LOAFERS!

Next, we watch while DR. IRWIN FRANKENSTEIN
performs an operation on her: he is SWTICHING HER BRAIN with
another young woman. The operation is a failure! Both young women
die. But, says Dr. Frankenstein, "It does not matter.
My technique is being perfected." His assistant asks how
they will dispose of the bodies. "¡Like all the others!
¡They will WALK OUT OF HERE UNDER THEIR OWN POWER!" But
why? asks the assistant. It would be much easier to cremate them.
"Because," says Dr. Frankenstein, "¡I want to
show the police what kind of genius theyre dealing
with!" The two dead girls lurch out into the night, showing
quite a bit of zombie cleavage. They go to their respective homes
and strangle their husbands.

A special news bulletin: "¡A group of
distinguished scientists has examined the victims of this
diabolical genius! They have established their brains were
switched and both girls died during the operation. What has
perplexed them is both young women were able to walk home after
they were already dead. The city is filled with Terror."

Dr. Frankenstein regards the news report with
satisfaction, then switches to the Wrestling Channel. He watches
SANTO, THE MULTITUDES IDOL for a moment, and announces,
"I need that mans brain!"

And who wouldnt? We watch a tag team
matchSanto (who always wears a silver mask, the kind
favored by guys who knock over 7-11s) and his pal BLUE
DEMON (in a blue mask) vs. a couple of UNMASKED wrestlers. We
watch the ENTIRE THREE ROUND MATCH. From the same camera angle.
The play-by-play announcer says, "Santo, the
Multitudes Idol, uses his knowledge and intelligence to
dominate Mendoza," and "The beautiful girls
applaud."

After the match Santo and Blue Demon go on a
double date with their girl friends. (Interestingly, even though
the movies are in Spanish, Santo always calls Blue Demon
"Blue" rather than the Spanish word for Blue,
"Azul."). They are still wearing their masks, but
nobody pays any attention. Santos girl friend, Alicia,
wears a pink pantsuit like the ones my mom wore when she was
about 65. "Your father, who taught Blue Demon and me the
locks with which we won the match tonight, would be so proud that
you are a bacteriologist," says the suave Multitudes
Idol.

In order to get Santos brain, Dr.
Frankenstein sends some thugs to kidnap Alicia. Santo and Blue
Demon go to the police (still wearing their masks) and offer
their assistance. "We can always use your help," says
the commander. "Here are two beautiful and skillful
detectives to aid you."

That night there is another match scheduled.
"To think Licia is in that maniacs hands or that
he has turned her into a zombie," muses Santo. "And we
will have to go out and wrestle." Blue Demon shakes his
head: "We have no choice." Here follows another three
round matchif anything, even more exciting than the first!

Dr. Frankenstein sends his goons out to kidnap
those two beautiful and skillful detectives but Santo and Blue
Demon foil them. But he wants that brain! So he sends Santo a
note"Turn yourself over to me or I will turn Alicia
into a zombie. (signed) Dr. Irwin Frankenstein." "¡Dr.
Frankenstein!" exclaims Santo. "Incredible, but we have
to believe it," says Blue Demon. "I must agree with
Blue Demon," says the police commander.

Santo appears at the designated location and is
taken to the secret lab. BUThe is wearing a RADIO
WRISTWATCH. And so is Blue Demon. Even though he is in the middle
of dinner with his girl friend, when Santo calls, Blue Demon
springs into action. "I must go. Please pay the check."

Dr. Frankenstein gets ready to operate,
informing his minions, "¡Tonight I will be attempting a
surgical prowess of great importance and I wont want any
interrumptions! ¿Understand?" Perhaps not, but in any case
the minions do not interrump him.

Blue Demon drives to the old warehouse where
the secret lab is hidden and picks the lock with his pocketknife.
Santo is on the operating table being prepped for the brain
operation. Brain operations apparently do not require mask
removal. And then...

Well, I dont want to spoil the climax, or
even the final three round tag team match. (I have to say that I
was rather astonished to see Alicia sitting ringside between the
two beautiful and skillful detectives, all of them smiling and
cheering Santo onthe clear implication is that Santo
possess some hitherto unsuspected, Hef-like powers). Although
"Santo y Blue Demon Contra El Dr. Frankenstein" is my
favorite among the four DVDs in the set, the others are also
excellent and should have been nominated for Oscars™ as
well. In one of them, Santo and his girl friend (theres a
different one in each movie) and another woman are escaping from
some monsters and they flag down a passing jeep. "Excuse me,
could you take the girls to town? They are in danger."
"Of course, Santo," says the motorist, "You are my
favorite wrestler!" "Next time you see me fight, please
come to my dressing room, it would be a pleasure to see you
again," says Santo, the Multitudes Idol.

I wrote to the Academy to express my outrage
about Santo being totally shut out of this years Oscar
™ competition and I actually received a reply. "The
films you inquired about were not ELIGIBLE because (among OTHER
THINGS) they were released OVER 30 YEARS AGO. "Santo y Blue
Demon Contra El Dr. Frankenstein" dates from 1972." And
they must have assumed the I myself was Blue Demon because they
concluded with "Thanks for writing, Azul." Although
they spelled "Azul" wrong.

I was a bit reassured to learn that Santo had
not been deliberately snubbed by this years Academy
Award™ votersand delighted to discover that there are
literally SCORES of Santo movies I have yet to see!

Santo is the greatest hero! Or, as they would
say in Mexico: "¡Soy la bonita hermonita de Santo!"

Ive got a cold that I cant shake.
Ive been drinking plenty of liquids, gotten plenty of rest,
and all the other stuff everybody (including you) says to do, and
nothing works. This is the third week now. What do you do when
nothing works to relieve your cold?

(signed)

DESPERATE

DEAR DESPERATE:

What do I do when nothing works to relieve my
cold? I generally act like a cranky, foul-tempered old coot to
anyone dumb enough to get within earshot. There are myriad
techniques for this, which can be custom tailored to fit your
personality and situation; for more information, you should
contact my colleague, the Royal Pain in the Keester Expert Guy.
Ask for his free pamphlet, "Really Annoying Passive
Aggressive Strategies & Psychotic Temper Tantrums for
Beginners." Tell him I sent you.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

Is it feed a cold, starve a fever,
or is it starve a cold, feed a fever? I can never
remember. Thank you.

(signed)

WANTS TO GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME

DEAR WANTS,

Its "Feed a cold..." but so
what? Maybe if you would stop deferring to your colds,
they wouldnt stick around for six weeks. Maybe instead of
"feed a cold," it ought to be "Grab a cold by the
lapels and slap it around for ten minutes and then when it starts
blubbering slap it some more and say what are you? A
frigging WOMAN? and then shove it out the
door." Seriously. Thats the way I handle my colds, and
do they like it? They do not. Colds cant wait to hit the
bricks when they mess with me.

BUT. People are different. Lets say for
the sake of argument you like your colds and you want them to
stay as long as they can. Maybe you love your colds.
Well, then by all means you should feed them. But what should you
feed them?

This depends on the individual cold. Most colds
in this part of New Jersey have relatively simple tastes. You can
serve your cold foi gras on truffles, and your cold will go
"Oooh, how elegant!" but as soon as you turn your back
to uncork the wine, your cold is going to fold that truffle in
his napkin and slip it into the wastebasket. Go with traditional
NJ comfort foods: Hot Texas Wieners, Taylor Ham, Rt. 12 Roadkill,
etc. And put some mellow sounds on the hi fi.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

Last week you said if I put a half a lemon in
my mouth, sealed my mouth with duct tape, and sat with my feet in
a tub of fruit salad all night, my cold would be gone by morning.
Well, I did all that, and my cold wasn't gone by morning!
Explain, please.

(signed)

WAITING FOR YOUR EXPLAINATION

DEAR WAITING:

I meant the other half of the lemon. My bad.
Im sorry, I should have been more specific. This time,
please have someone take a photograph and mail it in so that I
can properly evaluate your technique, just in case something goes
amiss again.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

I dont see how you can call yourself the
cold REMEDY expert guy when everybody knows there is
NO CURE FOR THE COMMON COLD. It seems to me all your so-called
remedies are either old wives tales or stupid jokes you made up
yourself, but none of them will have the slightest effect on a
cold, which after all is caused by a virus.

(signed)

THINKS MAYBE YOU ARE FULL OF IT

DEAR THINKS:

I am going to be civil even though your rude
letter places me under no obligation to be so. For your
information, remedy has many meanings, only one of
which is cure. And for that matter, even if I did
mean cure, cure has a number of meanings
as well. It can mean to pickle, for instance. Or put
a The in front of it, and its a rock band with
the singer who does a guest vocal on the new Blink 182 CD.
Its also the priest who runs an abbey, if you put one of
those little French do-hickeys over the e. And so on.
Maybe YOU think that when I say remedy Im
talking about counteracting a virus, while in fact I am talking
about pickles; how do you know? Did you take out a sublet in my
brain? I dont think so.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

Heres a tip you might pass on to your
readers: my grandmother used to say that if you wanted to get
over a cold quickly, drink a couple of glasses of hot wine. Then
climb into bed. Pretty soon youll start sweating.
Youll konk out, but youll keep sweating, and by the
time you stop sweating, in a day or so, youll have sweat
out the entire cold. Just remember to have some clean sheets
ready, because youll probably have to change them three or
four times!

(signed)

GOOD ENOUGH FOR GRAMMA

DEAR GOOD:

Excellent advice. The only thing I can add:
once the person with the cold has konked out, the process can be
speeded up further by slipping one of his hands into a glass of
lukewarm water. In fact, you need not limit this to people with
coldsits an excellent preventative measure.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

You lied when you said that during the average
3 day cold your nose produces 150 gallons of mucous. It does not.
A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds at sea level. Even if m.
weighed half as much as water, that would come to 600 pounds.
Its absurd. Care to try again?

(signed)

DISAPPOINTED IN YOU

DEAR DISAPPOINTED:

No.

*

DEAR COLD REMEDY EXPERT GUY:

Why is it that when I have a cold, one nostril
will be all stopped up, and then after a while it suddenly clears
up, and the other one gets stuffy? Whats going on, and how
do I keep this from happening?

(signed)

ANNOYED

DEAR ANNOYED:

First of all, you probably want it to keep
happening; youve got a cold, so it isnt a case of one
clear nostril at a time vs. two clear nostrils, its one
clear nostril at a time vs. NO clear nostrils. Total no brainer,
from where the Cold Remedy Expert Guy is sitting. As to
whats going on, the germs that cause your nose to stuff up
are heat sensitive; that is, when the temperature in your nostril
reaches a certain temperature, they have to get out of there or
die. And when the right nostril gets plugged up, it starts
getting hot in there. So they race next door, and clog up the
left nostril while the right one unclogs. Then when that one
clogs up, its back to the other one. Its kind of like
a very boring, very stupid video game, only in a nose instead of
on a video screen. But then nobody ever said your average virus
was particularly bright, so perhaps they find it really amusing.

COLD BRAINS

Calvano and I walked home from Picarillos
house shaking our heads at the unfairness of the world. It was
bad enough that Picarillo had a cow brain. Hed bought it
from Mr. Paisley, the grammar school science teacher, at a yard
sale a year or so earlier for about 75 cents. It was in a jar
full of alcohol. For nearly two decades Mr. Paisley had kept the
brain on a shelf near the front of the science room, right beside
the stuffed gibbon. But the cow brain had been showing signs of
wear and tear so hed decided to part with it in favor of a
plastic replica. Calvano and I gave Picarillo a hard time about
not having dickered over the price, but the fact was we would
have paid anything for the cow brain and Picarillo knew it. We
told him the brain was in ratty shape and he got taken, but the
little fragments of bovine cerebellum bobbing around the jar only
added to the charm in Picarillos eyes, and in ours.

We wanted the cow brain, but what we really
envied was the way Picarillos mom seemed so unfazed by it.
"If I had a cow brain on my night stand, my mom would have a
stroke," said Calvano. "But did you see Mrs. Picarillo
with it?"

"Yeah," I said. We had been sprawled
all over Picarillos bed room floor listening to his record
"Theme from Batman and Other Groovy Tunes
Inspired by the Hit TV Show" (Pick to Click: side one cut
two, "Batmobile Wheels") when his mother had walked in
and actually dusted the jar with the cow brain. We
couldnt have been more flabbergasted if shed picked
up the brain and taken a bite out of it. She was the coolest mom
we could imagine, and it stung.

"You know, I tried to talk my mom into
letting me get a brain, and she just. Would. Not. Listen."

"Did you tell her it was really
educational and crap?"

"A course. I told her it could make the
difference between me getting into a good college or ending up
regrooving tires with Uncle Angelo at the Jiffy Wheel, but it was
like talking to a fire hydrant."

Calvano and I resigned ourselves to a life
without brains and continued to be amazed at Mrs.
Picarillos tolerance for Picarillos auxiliary gray
matter, right up to the day that she came into the bathroom while
we were changing the alcohol in the jar.

"What are you boys doing with the rubbing
alcohol?"

"Mr. Paisley said I gotta change the
alcohol every couple a months for to keep it as fresh as
possible," said Picarillo.

"Whats wrong with water? Would water
hurt the rubber or something?"

"What rubber, ma?"

I was not looking at her at that moment and so
I missed what must have been a remarkable series of facial
expressions, if it matched the series of sounds she produced,
culminating in a blood curdling shriek.

Mrs. Picarillo had just realized shed
been dusting a jar containing an actual cow brain for the past 18
months.

The next few minutes are rather a blur.
Im not sure if Mrs. Picarillo was speaking English or
Italian. The syllables poured out at such high speed that it
didnt matter. Picarillo was crying, "But MA! I TOLE
you it was a cow brain! A COURSE it was a REAL cow brain!! You
know how much a rubber one woulda COST??"

Calvano alone kept his head about him; he
nudged me and I held the jar steady while he finished filling it
with rubbing alcohol. Mrs. Picarillo was slowing down. A variety
of saints were invoked. Picarillo said "But MA! MA!" I
resealed the jar, and Calvano said, "Excuse me, Mrs.
Picarillo, but would you like us to funnel the alcohol back into
the bottles? The alcohol the cow brains been soaking in, I
mean?"

"No! No! No!" she said. "Just
get it out! Out of my house!"

"But MA!"

"Out! Out!"

Calvano wrapped his arms around the coveted
brain and we sprinted down the stairs. He had to put it down to
put his coat on, but as soon as that was accomplished we shot out
the door into the frozen afternoon. Picarillos little
sister Noreen was building a snowman on the front lawn. "Is
that my brothers stupid brain?" she said.

"Its one of em," said
Calvano.

For an hour we wandered through the streets
with the brain. "And he cant even get mad at us,"
sighed Calvano. "His MOM made us take the brain!"
"Yeah." We continued wandering. We knew we
wouldnt be allowed to bring the brain to either of our
homes. Our moms wouldnt even tolerate rubber brains.
After a while we found ourselves back on Picarillos street.
It was getting dark. The light in Picarillos window seemed
melancholy, now that none of it was being refracted off the jar
containing the cow brain.

"So what are we gonna do with it?"
said Calvano.

"For now, I think we should just bury it
in the snow by Mrs. Picarillos roses. Nobodys gonna
go near them till spring. Well figure something out before
then."

"Well, you know," said Calvano,
"If were gonna leave it in Picarillos
yard..." He put the brain down, and lifted the head off
Noreens snowman. There would have been more room in the
middle section of the snowman, but it was a brain, so it
didnt occur to either of us to put it anywhere but the
head, even thought we had to add a considerable amount of bulk to
the rest of the snowman to keep it from looking hydrocephalic.

We went home with the sense of a job well done.
Over the next week or ten days, we occasionally added snow to the
snowman to make it more secure. Calvano stuck a rather spiffy
pork pie hat on it.

This turned out to be a mistake, since the dark
cloth of the hat absorbed heat more efficiently than the snow.
One Saturday towards the end of January I awoke to a frantic
phone call from Calvano. "Its 40 degrees!" he
said. "Lets move it!"

I got to Picarillos house first, but the
Picarillos were already in the yard, looking at the snowman. Most
of the head had melted and the jar with the brain had sunk three
or four inches into the next section. The brain was bobbing
sluggishly in the jar. The pork pie hat was sitting atop the jar.

"Wow," I said.

"Any thoughts on how this came
about?" said Mrs. Picarillo.

"Uh," I said. "Uh..."

"Its an, uh, experiment,"
Calvano announced, out of breath, as he jogged into the yard.

"Is it a success?"

"Uh..."

"All right," said Mrs. Picarillo. She
tugged on Picarillos scarf. "Bring it in. You can put
it in your room, but you cover it with a cloth when Im
cleaning up. Capice?"

Picarillo nodded happily. Calvano bet me 2
bucks that Picarillo would trip and drop the jar before he got to
his room but it didnt happen.

"The hat changed her mind," I said.
"It looked kind of goofy with the hat, instead of, you know,
like gross."

"What hes gotta get is a really COOL
piece of cloth, with a picture of like a dead guy with a snake
crawling out of his eye socket or something," said Calvano,
brushing snow off the pork pie hat. "Then it would be a
total victory."

NEXT
STOP: FLORENCE!

[The eve of my daughters
last night in New Jersey, prior to her leaving for Florence,
Italy for the spring semester. She is watching television. I am
attempting to tie up any remaining loose ends.]

ME: Did you double check to make
sure youve got all your paperwork like I asked?

EMMA: I think so.

ME: You think so?

EMMA: But I need a... what do you
call it when you have money from one country but youre in
another country so you have to change your money into their
money? I need that, but for my laptop.

ME: What?

EMMA: They have different PLUGS in
Italy.

ME: You need an adaptor. We can
pick one up tomorrow morning at the mall.

EMMA: Il Mallo.

ME: Is that actually what they
call the mall in Italian?

EMMA: I have no idea. I know
exactly three words of Italian. Pizza. Ravioli. And, uh... Well,
maybe I know exactly two words of Italian. No, wait, I know some
cheeses as well.

ME: You know, Im surprised
you havent tried to pick up a little more. Did you check
out any books on Italy or anything?

EMMA: [points to the TV screen]
Im boning up right now.

ME: Thats
"Gladiator."

EMMA: Correct. All those people
are Italians. They seem to be a feisty people.

ME: I hear things are a little
different there now.

EMMA: Oh sure, youd know.
Have YOU ever been to Italy?

ME: No.

EMMA: THANK you. Why doesnt
Russell Crowe get that mole removed? Hes a big star. Do you
think they let him keep the clothes from his movies?

ME: What mole?

EMMA: Hes got this big mole
between his eyes. Its gross. Otherwise hes great.
This is his buffest role. Although the scene where he teaches
math in a white t-shirt in "Beautiful Mind" is very
good, too. Are Italian men all like him?

ME: Hes not Italian.
Hes Australian.

EMMA: [holds up hand, forms it
into a C and opens and closes it, the universally
known sign for yack yack yack]. I think he got fat
for "Master and Commander." His face looks fat. And he
doesnt take his shirt off.

ME: Uh.

EMMA: I wonder if the script
called for somebody with a big stupid mole between his eyes. That
would explain why he didnt get it lasered off between
movies.

ME: I guess it would.

EMMA: Dont patronize me. You
know, I asked you to bid on that toothbrush on eBay. You
didnt bid on the toothbrush.

ME: No, I didnt. I HAVE a
toothbrush.

EMMA: It was for ME.

ME: You have a toothbrush too.

EMMA: I dont have that
toothbrush. Did you read what it said? It comes with a
certificate of authenticity. How can you NOT WANT Jeffrey
Dahmers toothbrush?

EMMA: Nobody is bidding. You could
click the click here to purchase NOW button and get
it for $620.

ME: The fact that nobody is
bidding on Jeffrey Dahmers toothbrush gives me a faint
sliver of hope for the future of humanity.

EMMA: You know, I dont think
Ive ever seen a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer smiling. I have
no idea if he took good care of his teeth or not.

ME: I guess he just wasnt a
happy-go-lucky kind of guy.

EMMA: But youd think, given,
you know, his line of work and all, hed be real diligent
about oral hygiene.

ME: You know, I wouldnt
think that at all. Quite the contrary.

EMMA: Oh I forgot. Youre an
EXPERT on cannibals and oral hygiene. Cannibals, oral hygiene,
Italy, you are the go-to guy when somebody wants to know about
any of them.

ME: Im just saying... Oh,
never mind. So we need an adaptor for your laptop. Anything else
we have to take care of?

EMMA: We need to get that mole
lasered off before he does another movie. AND, no more fat face
movies. Hes done one, we know he can do the fat-face movie
thing, now its time to get back to buff movies.

ME: Let me make a note of that. No
more fat face movies... back to buff movies... Did you finish
packing all your clothes?

ME: This is northern Sunny Italy.
You know the first scene in "Gladiator," where
youve got all those snow flakes and frost coming out of
everybodys mouths? Its kind of like that.

EMMA: That was in Germania.

ME: Whatever. Florence is roughly
the same latitude as Milwaukee. Its not nearly as cold, but
it aint tropical. Trust me.

EMMA: Did you say Milwaukee
because thats where Jeffrey Dahmers from?

ME: No, of course not. Well,
actually, yes. But it really is about the same latitude.

EMMA: Im thinking if the
toothbrush doesnt sell this time... maybe I can get
everybody in the dorm in Florence to bid on it next time. We
could pool our funds and form a syndicate.

ME: A syndicate.

EMMA: And everyone would have the
toothbrush for a day. Wed have to work out some sort of
schedule.

ME: Would you all be brushing with
the toothbrush?

EMMA: Duh.

ME: You know, a communal
toothbrush is a terrible idea. And THAT communal toothbrush is
just totally beyond the pale.

EMMA: Well, if youd bid on
the toothbrush like you were supposed to, it wouldnt even
be a possibility. You have nobody to blame but yourself. The
Jeffrey Dahmer Toothbrush Syndicate would not even exist if not
for you.

ME: Not to rain on your parade or
anything, but at the moment the Jeffrey Dahmer Toothbrush
Syndicate DOESNT exist.

EMMA: Details!

BONGO
MADNESS

Most of the neighborhoods in my brain are
pretty respectable places. Oh, there might be a few pink
flamingos on the lawns over there in my cerebral cortex, and
maybe the folks in the ol frontal lobe do think the three
wittiest words in the English language are "pull my
finger," but by and large its a nice place to live.
There ARE some rather... unsavory areas... but I try
to steer clear of them, and the residents mostly leave me alone.

But every now and then a synapse misfires and
suddenly some guy from skid row in a raincoat and boxer shorts is
in charge of the whole brain for a while. When this happens, I
find myself thinking things like "Mmm, dinner at Taco Bell
sounds good tonight!" or "I bet Id look pretty
good with a Mohawk!" or "Wow! Mountain Dew on sale! I
better buy TWO!"

For most of my adult life, I have been
protected from the direst consequences of these brief mental
short circuits by a lack of disposable income. No matter how
intensely I yearned for an original oil painting of poker playing
dogs, on black velvet if possible, if I didnt have the
cash, my walls remained a poker-playing-dog-free zone.

But every now and then the synapse will go nuts
on payday, and then bad things happen. Hence the inline skates in
the closet. Hence the Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower commemorative
plate in the kitchen. And hence, perhaps, the bongos I am looking
at right now.

I say perhaps because to be honest,
Im not sure if the bongos are the result of a mental hiccup
or if I have finally gotten in touch with my inner beatnik.

I was sipping coffee in a friends kitchen
a few days ago and there, at the edge of the kitchen table, was a
set of bongos. I absently slapped one of the bongo heads and
instantly it was, like, wow.

I NEEDED bongos.

So I went to a toy store and bought a set.

The fact that I went to a toy store and bought
beginner bongos, rather than went to a music store and spent 200
bucks on custom bongos from Argentina, makes me hopeful that my
bongo mania not the result of a crossed wire in the cerebellum.

The first thing I did upon getting my bongos
home was figure out how to play the "Twilight Zone"
theme. Just the bongo part, not the melody or anything. I did
this for about four hours. After a while I heard my upstairs
neighbor stirring. I guess its hard not to move your feet
when you hear the happy sound of a bongo playing the theme from
"Twilight Zone."

Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates the
joys of bongo-dom. The next day, my daughter stopped by to play
"Boggle." She was way ahead of me after just three
rounds, even though I was cheating pretty shamelessly. Generally
I can clean her clock by inventing words like
tildophont and then intimidate her into not checking
in the dictionary. Not this time, though. "You arent
concentrating," she said. "You keep looking at your
stupid bongos. Stop looking at the bongos. And stop talking like
a beatnik."

After she left I went back to my bongos. I was
interrupted by a phone call from a telemarketer. Instead of
hanging up as I usually do, I responded to each question with a
flourish on the bongos. The telemarketer hung up after about a
minute and a half. It was incredibly satisfying.

I went back to practicing the Twilight
Zone theme, and once more I heard my upstairs neighbor
moving about. "Stop stop stop, oh dear God, stop!" I
heard her exclaim, although in what context I have no idea. I try
not to pry into the personal lives of my neighbors. I wasnt
100% sure she could hear the bongos so I began to hit the skins a
little harder, in the hope that the soothing rhythms of the
bongos would provide some relief for whatever was stressing her
out.

About 1 AM there was a knock on my door. I
assumed it was my neighbor, probably come to ask if I would mind
if she listened while I practiced the bongos. I brought the
bongos with me to the door and beat a kind of badda
badda badda badda BAP" before I threw open the door.

"Like hello," said the cop. There
were in fact two cops at the door.

"Um," I said.

"Yo, Maynard," said the second cop,
"Its one oclock in the morning. Time for all
cats and chicks to, like, put their bongos down for the night and
get some shut eye."

"Maynard?"

When the cops left I could TELL that my
upstairs neighbor was still listening for the bongos. I felt
terrible about cutting the music short, but what could I do?
After a while I heard her shoes drop to the floor as she sadly
went to bed. It was kind of heart breaking. My only consolation
is that, although I will have to restrict my playing to the hours
before midnight, there will be PLENTY of bongo music in her
future.

Dig it.

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